Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art of the Impossible

Description

The collision of politics and claims of political intervention with the fantastic, absurd, and impossible is characteristic of the Athenian comic drama of the late fifth and early fourth century BCE, and has proved persistently problematic for critics. This book sets the impossible centre-stage and argues that comic impossibility should not be ignored in political readings or, conversely, used as a reason for excluding comedy from political interventions, but that anti-realism and the absurd are precisely the mechanisms through which this sort of comedy had political and social effects, manipulated its audience, and maintained its position in an environment of many competing political claims. Drawing on a variety of theoretical paradigms, from semiotics and humour theory through to ancient literary criticism, this book seeks to articulate a model of comic narrative and argument that can be applied equally both to the impossible worlds of Old Comedy and those of related forms of comedy in other traditions. This model emphasizes complex and provisional conceptual development over the linear and inflexible models of traditional models of comic narrative, and makes the joke and routine the base elements of comic plot. Pervasive comic self-reflexivity ('metatheatre') is presented as a special case of comic impossibility and one that intensifies and consolidates audience response. The on-going dialogue with comic rivals and performance forms provides both foundational matter for comic worlds and a competitive dimension to those worlds, an argument about the best kind of comic world and a demonstration that comic anti-realism has the political and conceptual measure of its more widely-recognized and supposedly realist rivals. Title Pages Dedication Preface Abbreviations and References Tripping Over the Light Fantastic Abstract and Keywords 1.1 Plato’s comedy store 1.1.1 Satire, context, and audience response 1.1.2 Philosophy, comedy, and cultural competition 1.1.3 Comedy as social control 1.1.4 The ethics of comedy 1.1.5 Comedy and realism 1.1.6 Impossible positions 1.2 The art of the impossible Notes: Possible Worlds and Comic Fictions Abstract and Keywords 2.1 Possible, impossible, and fictional worlds 2.1.1 Comic possibilities 2.1.2 Fictional worlds 2.1.3 Are comic worlds just not possible? 2.2 Illusion, fiction, and make-believe 2.2.1 Taking fiction seriously (or not) 2.2.2 Theatrical, fictional, and comic space 2.3 Between worlds: identification, mapping, and reference 2.3.1 Transworld identity and accessibility 2.3.2 Character, plot, and evaluation 2.4 Logic, cognition, and emotion Notes: On Eating Cake: Joke Semiotics Abstract and Keywords 3.1 Is laughter central to komoidia? 3.2 Metaphors and other jokes 3.2.1 Metaphor, allegory, and meaning 3.2.2 Oracles, jokes, and interpretation 3.2.3 Mapping tropes and jokes 3.2.4 Plausibility and implausibility 3.3 Towards a theory of the joke 3.3.1 Incongruity: opposition and overlap 3.3.2 Motivation and metaphor 3.3.3 Comic mode of communication 3.3.4 Jokes as narrative 3.4 Summary Notes: Comic Motivation: Jokes and Episodic Plot Comic Networks: Story and Argument Abstract and Keywords 5.1 Comic structure 5.1.1 Metrical structure 5.1.2 Narrative grammars 5.1.3 Deep structure 5.1.4 Single, double, and joke plots 5.1.5 Episodes, story, and structure 5.2 World, episode, and argument: Akharnians 5.3 Jokes, concepts, and comic meaning: Knights 5.3.1 Comic world and impossible characters 5.3.2 Associative networks and plot 5.3.3 Networks, narrative, and argument 5.3.4 Comic infrastructure 5.3.5 No way out? 5.4 How did we learn today? Notes: Entering the Metaverse: Comic Self-Reference Abstract and Keywords 6.1 Disruptive theory 6.2 Thinking the unthinkable 6.2.1 Radical or (post)modern? 6.2.2 The metatheatrical environment 6.2.3 Impossibly self-aware 6.3 The limits of self-reference 6.3.2 Metatheatre as difference 6.3.3 Stabilizing the comic world 6.4 Chorus and consistency 6.5 The comic multiplier 6.6 Strangely significant worlds Notes: The Role of The Audience: Ideology, Identity,and Intensity Abstract and Keywords 7.1 Constructing the audience 7.1.1 Spectators as polis 7.1.2 Breaking up the audience. 7.1.3 The audience in the performance: politics and presence 7.2 From worlds to stage: mapping audiences 7.2.1 Slippage and transworld identification 7.2.2 Internal and external audience. 7.3 Dionysiac worlds/festive worlds 7.4 Anti-realism, metatheatre, and fantasy politics Notes: Flights of Fancy: Tragic Myth and Comic Logos Abstract and Keywords 8.1 Parody, intertextuality, and anti-realism 8.1.1 The flight of the dung-beetle: audience, plot, and world 8.1.2 Incongruity, intertextuality, and self-reflexivity 8.1.3 Invective, satire, and authority 8.2 Tragic and comic possibilities 8.2.1 Crazy comedy: genre, realism, and plausibility 8.2.2 Tragic naturalism and comic impossibility 8.2.3 The failure of realism 8.3 Parody, anti-realism, and postmodernist poetics Notes: A Total Write-Off: Continuity and Competition Abstract and Keywords 9.1 Comic intertextuality: iterability and innovation 9.1.1 Serialization and popular culture 9.1.2 The rhetoric of innovation 9.1.3 Ratcheting the joke 9.1.4 Tragic and comic difference 9.2 The comic multiverse: world, story, and plot 9.2.1 Aristophanes and Kratinos 9.2.2 The world turned upside down: utopia and anti-utopia 9.2.3 Flogging a dead dog: gender and innovation 9.2.4 Topicality, plot, and competition 9.2.5 Remakes, retakes, and revisions 9.3 Comic populations: satire and stereotype 9.4 What’s so funny? About Peace and comic understanding 9.4.1 There is a season: Peace, genre, and utopia 9.4.2 Politics and innovation: the parabasis of Peace 9.5 Comic competition Notes: Conclusion: Politics, Ideology, and Old Comedy Bibliography Index Locorum General Index