Comedy and Religion in Classical Athens

Comedy and Religion in Classical Athens
Author: Francisco Barrenechea
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2018-08-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108126154

This book opens up a new perspective on Aristophanic drama and its relationship to Greek religion. It focuses on the comedy Wealth, whose fantasy of universal enrichment is structured upon a rich and largely unexplored framework of traditional stories of Greek religious experiences, such as oracles, miracle cures, and the introduction of new gods. The book examines the form and function of these stories, and explores how the playwright adapts them for his own comic purposes, grounding his comic fantasy on stories of philanthropic divinities who dependably respond to the needs of their worshippers. The collaboration of these deities, who act in tandem with their worshippers, achieves the comic fantasy. Francisco Barrenechea also addresses the larger question of how comedy participated in the religion of its time by imagining and dramatizing beliefs, and reveals the salutary bond that can exist between humor and religion in general.

Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion

Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion
Author: Esther Eidinow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2016-08-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316715213

Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.

Comic Democracies

Comic Democracies
Author: Angus Fletcher
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2016-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421419343

Drawing on new empirical research from the political and cognitive sciences, Angus Fletcher deftly analyzes the narrative elements of two dozen stage plays, novels, romances, histories, and operas written by such authors as Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, William Congreve, John Gay, Henry Fielding, and Washington Irving. He unearths five comic techniques that were used to foster democratic behaviors in antiquity and the Renaissance, then traces the role of these techniques in Tom Paine's Common Sense, Thomas Jefferson's preamble to the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's farewell address, Mercy Otis Warren's federalist history of the Revolution, Frederick Douglass's abolitionist orations, and other key documents that played a pivotal role in the development of the early American Republic. --Publisher description.

Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres

Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres
Author: Emmanuela Bakola
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2013-04-18
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1107033314

Explores comedy's voracious and multifarious dialogue with a large spectrum of literary, sub-literary and paraliterary traditions surrounding and shaping it.

New Comedy

New Comedy
Author: Aristophanes
Publisher: Methuen Drama
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1994-03-14
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

Contains: Women in power; Wealth; The malcontent; The woman from Samos.

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy
Author: Michael Fontaine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 913
Release: 2014-04
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0199743541

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction to and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From its birth in Greece to its end in Rome, from its Hellenistic to its Imperial receptions, no topic is neglected. The 41 essays offer cutting-edge guides through comedy's immense terrain.

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy
Author: Martin Revermann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 523
Release: 2014-06-12
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0521760283

This book provides a unique panorama of this challenging area of Greek literature, combining literary perspectives with historical issues and material culture.

Lysistrata

Lysistrata
Author: Aristophanes
Publisher:
Total Pages: 64
Release: 1916
Genre: Lysistrata (Fictitious character)
ISBN:

Greek Comedy, Hellenistic Literature, Greek Religion, and Miscellanea

Greek Comedy, Hellenistic Literature, Greek Religion, and Miscellanea
Author: Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 448
Release: 1990
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

This book collects thirty-eight papers by the great classicist to commemorate his recent retirement as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. The papers, some of which were originally published in foreign journals and appear here in translation for the first time, reflect his interest in the fields of Greek comedy, Hellenistic literature, Greek religion, and Greek culture in general.