New Perspectives on Postclassical Comedy
PIERIDES II, Series Editors: Philip Hardie and Stratis Kyriakidis
The re-emergence of Menander from the landfills of Egypt in the late-19th century and the subsequent discovery of the Bodmer Codex in the 1950s caused a sensation among scholars. After a period in which the primary editing and reconstruction of the substantially preserved plays and fragments was the main line of criticism, scholars were finally in a position to take a deep breath and look at Menander and New Comedy, both Greek and Roman, in wider contexts of interpretation and with fresh perspectives drawn from innovative work both in Classical and more modern studies.
This book aims to showcase these new approaches to postclassical comedy. The individual contributions, six in total, approach New Comedy as theatrical performance, but also as a dynamic player in the socio-political discourses of the polis culture that gave birth to it. The chapters highlight continuities as well as discontinuities with the cultural and literary past of Athens and the Greek world, but mostly emphasise the progressiveness of New Comedy as a genre and its importance for the nascent culture of Hellenism and Rome thereafter.
Blume’s introductory chapter tells the story of Menander’s re-emergence from the tenebrae in full detail. The other five chapters are dual in nature: expositional of a method, but also practical examples of it. They are arranged in a fashion which underlines the major theoretical underpinnings of New Comedy studies, as they are being developed in the present: Cultural Studies (David Konstan and Susan Lape), Intertextuality and Performance (Antonis K. Petrides and Rosanna Omitowoju), and Reception in Rome (Sophia Papaioannou).
This book is part of a series. View the full series, "Pierides", here.
Antonis K. Petrides (BA University of Thessaloniki, MPhil & PhD Trinity College, University of Cambridge) is Lecturer in Classics at the Open University of Cyprus.
Sophia Papaioannou (BA University of Crete, PhD University of Texas at Austin) is Assistant Professor of Latin at the University of Athens.
“This excellent collection of essays offers a showcase of some of the most significant new approaches to New Comedy from the last few decades. The collection develops and explains its main points clearly and effectively and it offers a valuable resource for both specialist and non-specialist readers, giving a clear sense of what has been done and what remains to be done in the field of New Comic Studies. […] The book ends with a very extensive bibliography. This feature, along with the excellent essays themselves, makes this book an extremely valuable resource for anyone interested in fresh approaches to New Comedy.”
—Valeria Cinaglia, King’s College London, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 132, 2012
“Collectively these authors make the case for “the ever growing urgency for new perspectives on the comedy of postclassical times” (5). This informative book is made even more useful by a thirty-page bibliography (full of materials of interest to the general student of ancient comedy), index, and index locorum.”
—Richard Hardin, Professor Emeritus, University of Kansas, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2011
David Konstan
Sophia Papaioannou
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