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<i>Talking about Laughter, and Other Studies in Greek Comedy</i> (review)

2011; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 104; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/clw.2011.0037

1558-9234

Jeffrey Henderson,

Classical Antiquity Studies

Reviewed by: Talking about Laughter, and Other Studies in Greek Comedy Jeffrey Henderson Alan Sommerstein. Talking about Laughter, and Other Studies in Greek Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xiv, 343. $125.00 ISBN 978-0-19-955419-5. While Alan Sommerstein needs no introduction to readers of Attic drama, not a few of his studies have appeared in out-of-the-way journals and (exemplifying a recent trend in the discipline) in collections and conference volumes difficult for many to access, or were written for collections never (or not yet) published. For this volume, Sommerstein has selected fourteen such studies focusing on Aristophanes and Greek Comedy, all but one written after 1990, which well illustrate his broad range of interests and approaches, excepting only textual criticism and transmission. Individually and ensemble, they contribute significantly to our understanding and enjoyment of Greek comic drama in general and to our appreciation of the Aristophanic spirit in particular. These studies variously address the comic poets’ language, composition, competitive and theatrical contexts, and views of their own craft (“The language of Athenian women,” “The anatomy of euphemism in Aristophanic comedy,” “The silence of Strepsiades and the agon of the first Clouds,” “Old Comedians on Old Comedy,” “Nudity, obscenity, and power: modes of female assertiveness in Aristophanes”); comedy’s relationship to society and involvement (yes) in politics (“An alternative democracy and an alternative to democracy in Aristophanic comedy,” “Lysistrata the warrior,” “Kleophon and the restaging of Frogs”); its reflection of social divisions based on status (citizen, slave, alien), class, age, and gender (“The naming of women in Greek and Roman comedy,” “Slave and citizen in Aristophanic comedy,” “Response to Slater, ‘Bringing up Father: paideia and ephebeia in the Wasps?’”); its history as a genre (“Monsters, ogres, and demons in Old Comedy,” “Platonios Diff. Com. 29–31 and 46–52 Koster: Aristophanes’ Aiolosikon, Kratinos’ Odysses, and Middle Comedy”); and the special character of Aristophanic humor (“Talking about laughter in Aristophanes”). Even those who know the previously published studies will want to acquire them in this volume: appended to each are addenda that update, and occasionally correct, the original; a general introduction explains the logic of the selection and the arrangement of the studies, and relates them to current issues in the field; bibliographical references are collected at the end; and there is an index locorum and a general index. Moreover, two of the studies appear here for the first time (“Slave and citizen” and “Platonios”) and another virtually for the first time (“Nudity, obscenity, and power”), having originally appeared in the obscure and now defunct European Studies Journal; “Talking about laughter in Aristophanes,” first published in a French translation, appears in its original English version; and “Lysistrata the warrior” is “equipped with the scholarly apparatus which would have been inappropriate in the book in which it was originally published” (vii). Talking about Laughter is a must-read for specialists, but it also has much to offer non-specialists and both graduate and advanced undergraduate students: these are original works of scholarship that wear their great learning lightly, that are lucidly and engagingly written, and that illuminate important topics with cogency, imagination, and flair. [End Page 257] Jeffrey Henderson Boston University Copyright © 2010 The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Inc