Reading Roman Comedy

Reading Roman Comedy
Author: Alison Sharrock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2009-09-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139482645

For many years the domain of specialists in early Latin, in complex metres, and in the reconstruction of texts, Roman comedy is now established in the mainstream of Classical literary criticism. Where most books stress the original performance as the primary location for the encountering of the plays, this book finds the locus of meaning and appreciation in the activity of a reader, albeit one whose manner of reading necessarily involves the imaginative reconstruction of performance. The texts are treated, and celebrated, as literary devices, with programmatic beginnings, middles, ends, and intertexts. All the extant plays of Plautus and Terence have at least a bit part in this book, which seeks to expose the authors' fabulous artificiality and artifice, while playing along with their differing but interrelated poses of generic humility.

Nature of Roman Comedy

Nature of Roman Comedy
Author: George E. Duckworth
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2015-03-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400872375

This book provides the most complete and definitive study of Roman comedy. Originally published in 1952. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Roman Comedy

Roman Comedy
Author: David Konstan
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 1986
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780801493980

This book explores the social institutions, the prevailing social values, and the ideology of the ancient city-state as revealed in Roman Comedy. "The very essence of comedy is social," writes David Konstan, "and in the complex movement of its plots we may be able to discern the lineaments and contradictions of the reigning ideas of an age." David Konstan looks closely at eight plays: Plautus's Aulularia, Asinaria, Captivi, Rudens, Cistellaria, and Truculentus, and Terence's Phormio and Hecyra. Offering new interpretations of each, he develops a "typology of plot forms" by analyzing structural features and patterns of conventional behavior in the plays, and he relates the results of his literary analysis to contemporary social conditions. He argues that the plays address tensions that were potentially disruptive to the ancient city-state, and that they tended to resolve these tensions in ways that affirmed traditional values. Roman Comedy is an innovative and challenging book that will be welcomed by students of classical literature, ancient social history, the history of the theater, and comedy as a genre.

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.

Music in Roman Comedy

Music in Roman Comedy
Author: Timothy J. Moore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2012-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107006481

This book offers a new explanation of how the plays of Plautus and Terence worked as musical theatre.

Catullus and Roman Comedy

Catullus and Roman Comedy
Author: Christopher B. Polt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1108839819

Argues that Catullus adapts Roman comedy to explore private ideas about love, friendship, and social rivalry.

Greek and Roman Comedy

Greek and Roman Comedy
Author: Shawn O'Bryhim
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2001-06-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780292760554

Much of what we know of Greco-Roman comedy comes from the surviving works of just four playwrights—the Greeks Aristophanes and Menander and the Romans Plautus and Terence. To introduce these authors and their work to students and general readers, this book offers a new, accessible translation of a representative play by each playwright, accompanied by a general introduction to the author's life and times, a scholarly article on a prominent theme in the play, and a bibliography of selected readings about the play and playwright. This range of material, rare in a single volume, provides several reading and teaching options, from the study of a single author to an overview of the entire Classical comedic tradition. The plays have been translated for readability and fidelity to the original text by established Classics scholars. Douglas Olson provides the translation and commentary for Aristophanes' Acharnians, Shawn O'Bryhim for Menander's Dyskolos, George Fredric Franco for Plautus' Casina, and Timothy J. Moore for Terence's Phormio.

The Cambridge Companion to Roman Comedy

The Cambridge Companion to Roman Comedy
Author: Martin T. Dinter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1107002109

Provides a comprehensive critical engagement with Roman comedy and its reception presented by leading international scholars in accessible and up-to-date chapters.

Plautus and the English Renaissance of Comedy

Plautus and the English Renaissance of Comedy
Author: Richard F. Hardin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2017-11-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1683931297

The fifteenth-century discovery of Plautus’s lost comedies brought him, for the first time since antiquity, the status of a major author both on stage and page. It also led to a reinvention of comedy and to new thinking about its art and potential. This book aims to define the unique contribution of Plautus, detached from his fellow Roman dramatist Terence, and seen in the context of that European revival, first as it took shape on the Continent. The heart of the book, with special focus on English comedy ca. 1560 to 1640, analyzes elements of Plautine technique during the period, as differentiated from native and Terentian, considering such points of comparison as dialogue, asides, metadrama, observation scenes, characterization, and atmosphere. This is the first book to cover this ground, raising such questions as: How did comedy rather suddenly progress from the interludes and brief plays of the early sixteenth century to longer, more complex plays? What did “Plautus” mean to playwrights and readers of the time? Plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton are foregrounded, but many other comedies provide illustration and support.

The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence

The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence
Author: Mathias Hanses
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472132253

The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence documents the ongoing popularity of Roman comedies, and shows that they continued to be performed in the late Republic and early Imperial periods of Rome. Playwrights Plautus and Terence impressed audiences with stock characters as the young-man-in-love, the trickster slave, the greedy pimp, the prostitute, and many others. A wide range of spectators visited Roman theaters, including even the most privileged members of Roman society: orators like Cicero, satirists like Horace and Juvenal, and love poets like Catullus and Ovid. They all put comedy’s varied characters to new and creative uses in their own works, as they tried to make sense of their own lives and those of the people around them by suggesting comparisons to the standard personality types of Roman comedy. Scholars have commonly believed that the plays fell out of favor with theatrical audiences by the end of the first century BCE, but The Life of Comedy demonstrates that performances of these comedies continued at least until the turn of the second century CE. Mathias Hanses traces the plays’ reception in Latin literature from the late first century BCE to the early second century CE, and shines a bright light on the relationships between comic texts and the works of contemporary and later Latin writers.