Menander New Comedy And The Visual
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Menander, New Comedy and the Visual
Author: Antonis K. Petrides
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 2014-11-06
This book shows how both verbal and visual allusion position the plays of New Comedy within the context of contemporary polis culture.
Menander, New Comedy and the Visual
"This book argues that New Comedy has a far richer performance texture than has previously been recognised. Offering close readings of all the major plays of Menander, it shows how intertextuality - the sustained dialogue of New Comedy performance with the diverse ideological, philosophical, literary and theatrical discourses of contemporary polis culture - is crucial in creating semantic depth and thus offsetting the impression that the plots are simplistic love stories with no political or ideological resonances. It also explores how the visual aspect of the plays ('opsis') is just as important as any verbal means of signification - a phenomenon termed 'intervisuality', examining in particular depth the ways in which the mask can infuse various systems of reference into the play. Masks like the panchrēstos neaniskos (the 'all-perfect youth'), for example, are now full of meaning; thus, with their ideologically marked physiognomies, they can be strong instigators of literary and cultural allusion"--
Menander and the Birth of Domestic Drama
Author: Mitch Brown
language: en
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Release Date: 2024
Although few of his plays exist in full today, the fourth-century BCE Greek dramatist Menander was known far and wide throughout antiquity. He was one of the first to locate his dramas in the common household, rather than the mythic world of gods and heroes, and is now recognized as one of the pioneering figures of ancient Greek "New Comedy." The design of the Greek stage was such that the interiors of houses were almost never shown, which posed difficulties for a playwright interested in staging the domestic lives of ordinary people. Here, Mitch Brown dissects how Menander responded to this challenge. As Brown demonstrates, Menander successfully conjured offstage action and even characters in the audiences' imaginations; these offstage universes, Brown argues, are fundamental to understanding Menander's dramaturgy and its reception in later centuries. Menander's offstage methods and the new type of play (domestic drama) that he inaugurated directly influenced Western theater into the early modern period--and the impact of his innovations can still be seen indirectly today.