This paper examines the role of the generation gap in Aristophanes' construction of his persona throughout Wasps, Clouds, and Peace. It contends that in Wasps and Clouds Aristophanes defines the relationship with his audience and his rivals by presenting himself as the figure of a paternal son. The same stance shapes the comic poet's generic self-positioning in the initial scene of Peace, where the parody of Euripides' Aeolus and Bellerophon evinces a corrective attitude in relation not only to the troubled (...) images of fatherhood offered in the two tragic plays, but also to Aristophanes' unsuccessful performances as a paternal son in his earlier comedies. Euripidean intertextuality thus serves as a discursive medium through which Aristophanes dramatizes the turning points of his poetic autobiography. (shrink)

Examines the political dimensions of Aristophanes’ comic poetry. This original and wide-ranging collection of essays offers, for the first time, a comprehensive examination of the political dimensions of that madcap comic poet Aristophanes. Rejecting the claim that Aristophanes is little more than a mere comedian, the contributors to this fascinating volume demonstrate that Aristophanes deserves to be placed in the ranks of the greatest Greek political thinkers. As these essays reveal, all of Aristophanes’ plays treat issues of fundamental political importance, (...) from war and peace, poverty and wealth, the relation between the sexes, demagoguery and democracy to the role of philosophy and poetry in political society. Accessible to students as well as scholars, The Political Theory of Aristophanes can be utilized easily in the classroom, but at the same time serve as a valuable source for those conducting more advanced research. Whether the field is political philosophy, classical studies, history, or literary criticism, this work will make it necessary to reconceptualize how we understand this great Athenian poet and force us to recognize the political ramifications and underpinnings of his uproarious comedies. Jeremy J. Mhire is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Louisiana Tech University. Bryan-Paul Frost is James A. and Kaye L. Crocker Endowed Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the coeditor (with Jeffrey Sikkenga) of History of American Political Thought. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between comic speech and political authority in democratic Athens through a reading of Aristophanes’ Knights. The article surveys three different interpretations of how Aristophanes constructs the authority of his comic persona in the play: he contrasts comic speech with rhetorical speech to illustrate the superiority of the former ; he reflexively reveals to the audience the potential deceptiveness of comic speech ; and he mocks his own claims to authority through the construction of a comically (...) boastful persona. It is argued that the final two readings best capture the spirit of Aristophanic comedy, pointing to an affinity between the comic authority constructed by Aristophanes and the democratic conception of authority in operation in classical Athens. (shrink)

Plato’s treatment of poetry is usually discussed without reference to other contemporary reception of Greek poetry, leading to divergent political or aesthetic accounts of its meaning. Yet the culture of the Greek polis, in particular Athens, is the defining context for understanding his aims. Four distinct points are made here, and cumulatively an interpretation of Plato’s opposition to poetry: on the basis of other evidence, including Aristophanes’ Frogs, that Plato would quite reasonably understand poetry to claim the craft of looking (...) after a city ; that Socrates makes a rival claim that philosophy is the pursuit of this skill; that Plato considers the poets, owing to this rivalry, to aim to exclude philosophy from Athens; and finally, that Plato’s exclusion of poetry from the theoretical just city of the Republic is part of his defence of the possibility of philosophy in Athens. (shrink)