Paracomedy: Appropriations of Comedy in Greek Tragedy

345 Pages·2020·4.38 MB·English

by  Craig Jendza

iii
Paracomedy
Appropriations of Comedy in
Greek Tragedy
z
CRAIG JENDZA
1
iv
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Jendza, Craig, author.
Title: Paracomedy : appropriations of comedy in Greek tragedy /
Craig Jendza.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019038639 (print) | LCCN 2019038640 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190090937 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190090944 (updf) |
ISBN 9780190090951 (epub) | ISBN 9780190090968 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Greek drama (Tragedy)— History and criticism. |
Greek drama (Comedy)— History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PA3131 .J397 2020 (print) | LCC PA3131 (ebook) |
DDC 882/ .0109— dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/ 2019038639
LC ebook record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/ 2019038640
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Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
v
I’ve always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get
between comedy and tragedy.
— Steve Coogan
My life is a parody of a tragedy.
— Dana Marschz, played by Steve Coogan, Hamlet 2 (2008)
ix
Preface
There is a long list of people whose support and encouragement helped me
write this book. I am deeply grateful to Tom Hawkins, who taught me so much
about Greek drama, encouraged me to research paracomedy, oversaw my disser-
tation, read chapter drafts of this book, and provided a steady stream of mean-
ingful advice throughout my career. I also wish to thank Fritz Graf and Dana
Munteanu, who read and commented on my dissertation, and Sarah Iles Johnston
and Brian Joseph, who helped me grow as a scholar and a thinker. Rex Wallace,
Marios Philippides, Debbie Felton, and Ken Kitchell were the ones who inspired
me to get into classics in the first place. I am glad to count all of them as friends.
This book developed over many years and has received feedback from a vari-
ety of sources. In particular, I would like to thank all the anonymous readers who
took the time to give detailed comments on previous articles and book proposals
as well as the final manuscript of this book. Their rigorous feedback and their
helpful suggestions improved this project immensely. I also wish to thank the
audiences where I presented research on paracomedy: APA/ SCS (three times),
CAMWS (two times), University of Kansas (two times), UCLA, University of
Arizona, and Duke University. I found these experiences to be really valuable,
since very often a brief question or comment by an audience member would
prompt me to sharpen and refine my arguments. I especially want to recognize
Liz Scharffenberger, Ralph Rosen, and Toph Marshall, who were extraordinarily
kind and encouraging at pivotal stages in the project. Thanks are also due to
Isabelle Torrance, who kindly let me read her book on metapoetry in Euripides
before its publication.
The best part about working at the University of Kansas is the warm and
positive environment, and I couldn’t ask for better colleagues. They have all been
actively interested in me and my research, and I have learned a lot from them all.
Tara Welch and Michael Shaw both read several chapter drafts; Tara also arranged
for me to have a research- intensive semester at a crucial time for the completion
of the book. Pam Gordon provided a great deal of advice and mentorship. The
x
x Preface
MA students at the University of Kansas who took my graduate seminars on
Aristophanes and Euripides were outstanding; it was a pleasure to work along-
side them to better understand these dramas. Thanks go to my student Venessa
Freeman for her assistance with compiling and proofreading my bibliography.
I am grateful to everyone at Oxford University Press for their support in
preparing this book for publication: Stefan Vranka, who saw the potential
in this project when it was still in the early stages; my project manager Rajesh
Kathamuthu, who kept the production process on schedule; and my truly out-
standing copyeditor Wendy Keebler. I also would like to recognize the financial
support of my university; this investigation was supported by the University of
Kansas General Research Fund allocations 2302102 and 2139080. A portion of
chapter 5 is revised from an article that first appeared as “Bearing Razors and
Swords: Paracomedy in Euripides’ Orestes” in the American Journal of Philology
136, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 447– 468. Copyright © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press.
The final and most important thing to say is that this book would not have
been possible without my wife, Chelsea Bowden, who has single- handedly made
me a more rigorous thinker, a clearer writer, and a more compassionate person.
Her influence permeates this book.
xi
Note to the Reader
My aim was to make this book as accessible as possible to a wide variety of read-
ers. In general, I refer to names and play titles with whatever style would be the
most familiar and clearest to an English-s peaking non- specialist audience, for
example, Aeschylus instead of Aischylos, Women at the Thesmophoria instead
of Thesmophoriazusae. Occasionally, I’ve decided it would be clearer to leave a
title as is, such as Dionysalexandros. When transliterating Greek, I’ve chosen
to use macrons for long vowels instead of carets, for example, mēchanē instead
of mêchanê. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own, and they
attempt to render the Greek into ordinary, everyday English. When citing pas-
sages, I use “fr.” to refer to fragments, “T” to refer to testimonia, and “Σ” to refer
to scholia. I use the following editions: Aristophanes (Wilson 2007), Euripides
(Diggle 1981– 1994), tragedy (TrGF), comedy (KA), lyric (PMG), iambic (IEG),
and history (FGrH). The editions of other texts are marked in the notes. I use
Koster et al. 1960– 2007 for the scholia on Aristophanes and Schwartz 1887– 1891
for the scholia on Euripides. The following abbreviations are employed over the
course of the book:
FGrH Jacoby, F. 1923– 1958. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin
and Leiden: Brill.
KA Kassel, R., and C. Austin. 1983–. Poetae Comici Graeci. Berlin: De
Gruyter.
Koster Koster, W. 1975. Scholia in Aristophanem Pars I, Fasc. IA: Prolegomena
de Comoedia. Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis.
IEG West, M. 1989– 1992. Iambi et elegi Graeci. Oxford: Clarendon.
IG II2 Kirchner, J. 1913– 1940. Inscriptiones Graecae II et III: Inscriptiones
Atticae Euclidis anno posteriores, 2nd ed. Berlin: De Gruyter.
PMG Page, D. 1962. Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford: Clarendon.
TrGF Kannicht, R., S. Radt, and B. Snell. 1971– 2004. Tragicorum Graecorum
Fragmenta. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
1
 Introduction
This book explores the relationship between the literary and performed
genres of ancient Greek tragedy and comedy and, to a lesser extent, satyr drama.
I examine the previously overlooked practice of paracomedy, how Greek tragedi-
ans appropriated tropes from Greek comedy such as comic costumes, scenes, and
language and incorporated them into their tragedies. While scholars regularly
note the way comedy satirizes tragedy (paratragedy), they have generally ignored
the possibility of appropriations from comedy into tragedy. This project seeks to
cross the classics subdisciplines of tragedy and comedy and to treat Greek drama
holistically by demonstrating that paracomedy was a productive historical phe-
nomenon in Greek tragedy.
The three dramatic genres of tragedy, comedy, and satyr drama differed in
both their performative context and their generic norms. At the City Dionysia
festival, likely on the day before the first of the three tragedians staged his tetral-
ogy of three tragedies and a satyr drama, five comedians each put on a comedy.1
These comedies were altogether different entities from the tragedies and satyr
dramas, with different conventions and different competitions. There seem to
have been hard and fast boundaries separating tragedy and comedy in particu-
lar: a tragedian could not compete against a comedian for a prize in a festival,
only against other tragedians, and there are no examples from the fifth century
BCE of an Athenian dramatist composing a play in the opposite genre.2 Certain
codes of conduct were never broken; for example, there are no instances of a
1. Robson 2009: 17–2 0 outlines the different schools of thought about the performance lineup
of tragedies and comedies during the City Dionysia.
2. Taplin 1986: 163. Contrast a writer such as Ion of Chios, who wrote in numerous genres,
such as tragedy, elegy, history, biography, mythography, and philosophy; see Jennings and
Katsaros 2007.
Paracomedy. Craig Jendza, Oxford University Press (2020) © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190090937.001.0001
2
2 Paracomedy
tragedy using explicit obscenities such as βινέω (“fuck”).3 Yet there were areas
of overlap between the two genres. Both were performed in the same theatrical
space during the same festivals, and both were subject to the same conditions of
production. Both used similar stagecraft involving painted backdrops, trapdoors,
the eccyclēma (“outroller”), and the mēchanē (“crane”).4 Both had actors who gen-
erally spoke in iambic trimeters, and both had choruses who sang songs using the
same lyric meters and danced to the music of an aulos (“reed pipe”). Tragedians
and comedians were members of the same intellectual circle and probably knew
one another quite well, especially given the small size of Athens and their deep
knowledge of one another’s work.
A major aspect of these comedies, at least in the latter half of the fifth century
BCE, involved what scholars call paratragedy, comedians’ appropriation of ele-
ments from tragedy into their comedies, often for parodic effect.5 A brief exami-
nation of the comedies of Aristophanes demonstrates how blatant paratragedy
can be: in Acharnians, Aristophanes massacres Euripides’s penchant for heroes
dressed in rags;6 in Peace, he mocks the stagecraft of Euripides’s Bellerophon by
making his hero Trygaeus ride a dung beetle to Mount Olympus instead of the
noble steed Pegasus;7 in Frogs, he parodies Euripides’s language and dramaturgy
so much that he ends up leaving Euripides in the underworld;8 in Women at the
Thesmophoria, Aristophanes stages escape plots that specifically target Euripides’s
Palamedes, Helen, and Andromeda by name;9 in Wasps, Philocleon’s insanity is
modeled on tragic depictions of madness;10 and in Clouds, Strepsiades adopts the
language of tragic self- recognition when he recognizes his mistakes toward the
end of the play.11 These examples, drawn from a variety of Aristophanic comedies,
illustrate that just about any aspect of tragedy could be appropriated by comedy
3. On obscenity in Greek comedy, see Henderson 1991.
4. For overviews of Greek dramatic stagecraft and performance, see Taplin 1977, Taplin 1978,
Pickard- Cambridge 1988, Robson 2009: 30– 47, Csapo 2010, and Powers 2014: 11– 28.
5. Rau 1967 marks the beginning of serious investigation into paratragedy by analyzing numer-
ous comic scenes that are modeled on tragic ones and providing a database, with hundreds of
examples, of tragic lines that Aristophanes parodies. Farmer 2017 gives an excellent up- to- date
analysis of paratragedy, including the comic fragments.
6. Rau 1967: 19– 41, Foley 1988, and Platter 2007: 143– 162.
7. Rau 1967: 89– 97, Dobrov 2001: 89– 104, Telò 2010, and Farmer 2017: 118– 121.
8. Rau 1967: 115– 136, Dobrov 2001: 133– 156, Griffith 2013: 115– 149, and Farmer 2017: 1– 4.
9. Rau 1967: 42– 88, Nieddu 2004, Platter 2007: 162– 175, and Farmer 2017: 155– 194.
10. Wright 2013: 205– 225, Telò 2016: 56– 87, and Farmer 2017: 117– 154.
11. Silk 2000: 352– 354.
3
Introduction 3
for its own aims: tragic language, tragic costumes, tragic stagecraft, tragic motifs,
and even the distinctive ways tragedy tends to depict madness and responsibility.
Scholars have seen paratragedy as an essential feature of the genre, constituting
a source of the genre’s authority,12 a source of the genre’s identity as a literary
underdog in comparison with tragedy,13 and a source of its humor either through
subverting and ridiculing tragedy or through audience detection and identifica-
tion of quotations.14 Certainly, the effect of paratragedy was heightened by the
audience’s sense of the proximity of tragedy, occurring year after year during the
same festivals and in the same physical spaces as comedy. The substantial schol-
arly bibliography on paratragedy has offered increasingly complex interpretations
about the relationship between comedy and tragedy, though this relationship is
understood predominantly from the viewpoint of comedy.
This book, however, is not (at least primarily) about paratragedy but rather is
about its opposite, paracomedy, in which tragedy appropriates elements drawn
from comedy.15 Paracomedy does not necessarily involve the moments where
tragedy is lighthearted, funny, or humorous, any more than paratragedy is limited
to moments where comedy is serious, though at times paracomedy and paratrag-
edy can take these forms. Rather, paracomedy involves the adoption of a particu-
lar word, line, manner of expression, motif, theme, character type, scene, plot,
pattern, staging, costuming, or delivery that specifically belongs to comedy.16
Seidensticker calls the points where tragedy uses humor “comic elements” and the
points where tragedy uses aspects of the genre of comedy “comedy elements.”17
This study is not about comic elements in tragedy, as Seidensticker’s project is;
thus, I avoid treating examples such as the alleged “fat joke” toward Helen (Trojan
12. Foley 1988 and Platter 2007.
13. Rosen 2005.
14. For paratragedy subverting and ridiculing tragedy, see Silk 1993 and Robson 2009: 108–1 13.
For paratragedy and quotation culture, see Wright 2012: 145– 150.
15. I take the term paracomedy from Scharffenberger 1996: 65–7 2, where it is formed on anal-
ogy with the preexisting term paratragedy. This definition of paracomedy differs from Sidwell
1995: 65, who uses paracomedy for a comic poet’s ventriloquial technique of satirizing other
comic poets by “presenting his plays as though by another poet.” See Rosen 2000: 36–3 7 nn. 13,
17, and Storey 2003: 299 for responses to Sidwell’s concept of paracomedy.
16. Compare the definition of Sommerstein 2002: 153: “a comic figure of language, for this
purpose, is a feature that is common in comedy (and/o r in other low- register forms of verse,
such as iambus) but very rare or unknown in tragedy.” This can be extended beyond language
to include other theatrical features.
17. For the distinction between “comic elements” and “comedy elements,” see Seidensticker
1978: 305– 306.
4
4 Paracomedy
Women 1050), the elderly Iolaus arming himself for battle (Children of Heracles
630– 747), or the semicomic insecurities and anxieties of the guard in Antigone.18
Instead, I am concerned with comedy elements in tragedy, and as such, this study
contributes to our understanding of generic interactions in Greek drama and lit-
erature more broadly.
To briefly illustrate the type of authorial engagement I investigate in this book,
consider one well- known example of paracomedy from Euripides’s Bacchae (405
BCE). Pentheus has spurned the religious worship of Dionysus, and in response,
Dionysus took control of Pentheus, dressed him in women’s clothes, and forced
him to infiltrate a women’s religious festival. For a long time, scholars have
noticed strong parallels with a scene from a previous comedy of Aristophanes,
Women at the Thesmophoria (411 BCE), which similarly features a male character
getting forcibly dressed in women’s clothes and infiltrating a women’s religious
festival (this example will be analyzed further in chapter 3 in the context of a
wider discussion of paracomic costuming). Many have drawn the conclusion that
Euripides was formatively influenced by Aristophanes through his inclusion of
these Aristophanic elements of costume and plot. But we must be clear that here
Euripides is adopting comedy elements, not comic elements, since the effect in
Bacchae is neither humorous nor funny (and if there is humor at all, it is extraor-
dinarily dark). The thesis of this book is that we can uncover many more examples
of paracomedy similar to this and, consequently, that paracomedy was a promi-
nent feature of Greek tragedy.
One influential objection to the presence of paracomedy in Greek tragedy
was raised by Taplin, who argued that tragedy and comedy were diametrically
opposed with regard to five traits: explicit audience address and reference to audi-
ence, explicit reference to the writing of texts, explicit metatheatricality, explicit
meta- references to costuming, and explicit parody of other texts.19 By “explicit,”
I mean that the playwright indicates that an allusion is occurring through a direct
citation of the specific target material by name, for example, when Aristophanes
brings tragedians onstage in his comedies,20 names specific tragedies,21 or refers
18. Seidensticker 1982 treats tragedy’s use of humor and lightheartedness. For a skeptical view
of comic elements or humor in tragedy, see Gregory 1999– 2000: 59– 74.
19. Taplin 1986: 163– 174.
20. For example, Agathon at Women at the Thesmophoria 95– 265; Aeschylus and Euripides
at Frogs 830– 1533; and Euripides at Acharnians 394– 488 and in Women at the Thesmophoria.
21. For example, Euripides’s Palamedes at Women at the Thesmophoria 770 and 848; Euripides’s
Helen at Women at the Thesmophoria 850; and Euripides’s Andromeda at Women at the
Thesmophoria 1012.