Classical Myth and Literature in Parody : Ancient and Modern.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hansen, William F.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2026.

Summary:

This book explores classical parody, from ancient Greek and Roman insider humor to modern parodies, revealing how classical texts have been humorously reimagined through centuries of cultural shifts.

Contents:

Cover

Halftitle page

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

High and low

Parody, travesty, burlesque

What did the Greeks mean by parody?

Parodists in Greece and beyond

The present book

Part One Classical Parody in Antiquity

1 Aristophanes, Scenes from Old Comedy

Mock oracle

Parody of tragic diction

Parody of a tragedy

2 Matron of Pitane, Attic Dinner-Party

3 Pseudo-Homer, Battle of the Frogs and Mice

4 Plautus, Amphitruo

5 Ovid, Metamorphoses

6 Lucian of Samosata, Gout and A True Story, plus Lucian's Hoaxes

Mock tragedy

Mock historiography and ethnography

Lucian's hoaxes

7 Visual Parodies

Downward substitution

Inversion

Caricaturism

Trivialization

Incongruity

Excursus 1

The triumph of Christianity

The fall of the Western Roman Empire

The persistence of classical Greek and Latin

Intermezzo

8 Medieval Latin Parody

9 Byzantine Parody

Excursus 2

The printing revolution

Classics in education

Part Two The Reinvention of Classical Parody

10 Classical Parody Redivivus

11 [Charles Cotton,] Scarronides: or, Virgil Travestie

12 [Jonathan Swift,] Baucis and Philemon

13 [Thomas Bridges,] A Burlesque Translation of Homer

14 Musical Theatre

Comic opera

Victorian burlesque

15 Mock Textbooks

Percival Leigh, The Comic Latin Grammar

Gilbert à Beckett, The Comic History of Rome

Charles M. Snyder, Comic History of Greece

16 Anonymous, 'Carmen Possum

Anonymous, 'Carmen Possum' (c. 1867)

17 A. E. Housman, 'Fragment of a Greek Tragedy'

Part Three Classical Parody in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

18 Maurice Baring, Unreliable History.

'Jason and Medea' (pp. 136-43)

'Medea Goes Shopping' (pp. 144-8)

19 W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, And Now All This

20 Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

Alexander the Great (pp. 41-8)

Hannibal (pp. 49-56)

21 Richard Armour, The Classics Reclassified

22 John Bailey, 'Holp!'

23 Regius Professor of Greek, 'A Note on the Use of the Strong Aorist Optative Passive of πλέκω by Attic Poets of the Middle and New Comedies

24 William Hansen, 'The Structural Study of Myth, or Oedipus at the Sorbonne'

25 Anonymous, 'A Warm, Fuzzy Story'

A Warm, Fuzzy Story

26 Light Verse

Overview

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-350-54806-5

1-350-54804-9

1-350-54805-7