Reproducing Athens : Menander's comedy, democratic culture, and the Hellenistic city / Susan Lape.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lape, Susan, 1965-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Menander, of Athens--Knowledge--Athens (Greece).

Menander.

Menander, of Athens--Political and social views.

Politics and literature--Greece--Athens.

Politics and literature.

Political plays, Greek--History and criticism.

Political plays, Greek.

Democracy in literature.

Comedy.

Athens (Greece)--Intellectual life.

Athens (Greece).

Athens (Greece)--Politics and government.

Athens (Greece)--In literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (311 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Reproducing Athens examines the role of romantic comedy, particularly the plays of Menander, in defending democratic culture and transnational polis culture against various threats during the initial and most fraught period of the Hellenistic Era. Menander's romantic comedies--which focus on ordinary citizens who marry for love--are most often thought of as entertainments devoid of political content. Against the view, Susan Lape argues that Menander's comedies are explicitly political. His nationalistic comedies regularly conclude by performing the laws of democratic citizen marriage, thereby promising the generation of new citizens. His transnational comedies, on the other hand, defend polis life against the impinging Hellenistic kingdoms, either by transforming their representatives into proper citizen-husbands or by rendering them ridiculous, romantic losers who pose no real threat to citizen or city. In elaborating the political work of romantic comedy, this book also demonstrates the importance of gender, kinship, and sexuality to the making of democratic civic ideology. Paradoxically, by championing democratic culture against various Hellenistic outsiders, comedy often resists the internal status and gender boundaries on which democratic culture was based. Comedy's ability to reproduce democratic culture in scandalous fashion exposes the logic of civic inclusion produced by the contradictions in Athens's desperately politicized gender system. Combining careful textual analysis with an understanding of the context in which Menander wrote, Reproducing Athens profoundly changes the way we read his plays and deepens our understanding of Athenian democratic culture.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Abbreviations

1. Narratives of Resistance and Romance

2. Reproducing Democracy in Oligarchic and Autocratic Athens

3. Making Citizens in Comedy and Court

4. The Ethics of Democracy in Menander's Dyskolos

5. The Politics of Sexuality in Drama and Democratic Athens

6. The Mercenary Romance

7. Trials of Masculinity in Democratic Discourse and Menander's Sikyōnioi

8. Conclusion: Inevitable Reproduction?

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index Locorum

General Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-278) and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612458255

9781282458253

1282458256

9781400825912

1400825911

OCLC:

650308118