The Comedian as Critic: Greek Old Comedy and Poetics

257 Pages·2012·3.76 MB·English

by  Matthew Wright

The Comedian as Critic
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THE COMEDIAN
AS CRITIC
Greek Old Comedy and Poetics
MATTHEw wRIGHT
Bristol Classical Press
First published in 2012 by
Bristol Classical Press
an imprint of
Bloomsbury Academic
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London wC1B 3DP, UK
Copyright © 2012 by Matthew wright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
CIP records for this book are available from the
British Library and the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1780930299
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the
MPG Books Group, Bodmin, Cornwall
www.bloomsburyacademic.com
Contents
Preface ix
1. Reading comic criticism 1
1.1. Comedians and critics 2
1.2. Getting the jokes 5
1.3. In search of the author 10
1.4. Comic refraction 16
1.5. The social utility of literature 17
1.6. The importance of being clever 25
2. Literary contests 31
2.1. Making fun (out) of contests 32
2.2. Literary prizes and the invention of criticism 35
2.3. The economy of prestige 37
2.4. Consecration: the ‘pro-prize’ mentality 41
2.5. Devaluation: the ‘anti-prize’ mentality 42
2.6. The theatre audience and the adjudication process 46
2.7. Performances vs ‘literature’ 60
2.8. Conclusions and consequences 67
3. Novelty 70
3.1. Aristophanic self-promotion 71
3.2. The ubiquity of novelty 77
3.3. Old vs new in late fifth-century Athens 78
3.4. ‘Fashion’ in literature and music 83
3.5. Anti-novelty 86
3.6. Palimpsests, rehashes and repetition 90
Appendix: Old jokes in Frogs 99
4. The metaphorical language of criticism 103
4.1. Temperature 108
4.2. Air, atmosphere and weather 110
4.3. Craft and construction 116
4.4. Bodily functions 120
4.5. Art and life 123
4.6. Drink 125
4.7. Food 129
v
Contents
5. The comedian as reader 141
5.1. The literature of erudition 143
5.2. Autonomous and gnomic quotations 150
5.3. Parody as commentary 156
5.4. Genre 162
5.5. Close reading 164
5.6. Conclusions and consequences 168
Appendix: Checklist of play titles 173
Notes 179
Bibliography and abbreviations 211
Index of passages cited 225
General index 233
vi
You have been talking of criticism as an essential part of the creative
spirit, and I now fully accept your theory. But what of criticism
outside creation? I have a foolish habit of reading periodicals, and
it seems to me that most modern criticism is perfectly valueless.
Oscar wilde, The Critic as Artist
vii
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Preface
Fifth-century Athenian comedy is full of jokes about poets and poetry.
This book tries to make sense of these jokes, and asks what comedy can
reveal to us about the early history and development of literary criticism.
Anyone who sits down to write a scholarly monograph about comedy
is putting himself in a risky position. Classical scholars have many fine
qualities, of course, but they are not generally noted for their sense of
humour. Over the last few years I have often found myself thinking,
somewhat uneasily, of the remarks of E.B. white, in his famous essay
‘Some Remarks on Humor’ (1941):
Analysts have had their go at humor, and I have read some of this
interpretative literature, but without being greatly instructed. Humor can
be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards
are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind (white [1977] 243-4).
There is likely to be a fairly large gap, in other words, between the extent
to which comedy can be analysed and the extent to which its authors
would have wanted it to be analysed. I have tried to approach comedy
in what I think is the right sort of spirit, but perhaps it is impossible
for a scholar, however well-intentioned, to avoid killing off at least some
of the jokes that he painstakingly sets out to interpret. And then there
is the problem of how to write: surely a sober, neutral, academic style
will seem tonally at odds with the material under discussion. It can feel
incongruous to adopt a serious, earnest voice when discussing frivolous
subject-matter, as if one is somehow deliberately missing the point. But
can one put jokes in a monograph? In the early stages of writing this book,
I experimented with using different voices (facetious, satirical, waspish,
Aristophanic, wildean, wodehousian, etc.), and even contemplated
writing it in the form of a comic dialogue between different characters
– but all of these experiments produced rather leaden or embarrassing
results. In the end, concluding that my own sense of humour must have
been fatally weakened by years of research and teaching, I decided to
revert to a familiar mode of conversational, academic English. I hope,
therefore, that Cratinus, Aristophanes et al. would not have been too
affronted by this book in the form in which it now appears. If they are at
this moment turning furiously in their graves, let me state a firm belief
that their work remains funny and powerful enough to survive this sort
of scholarly dissection.
ix