Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The poet hero: language and representation in the Odyssey
- 2 Intimations of immortality: fame and tradition from Homer to Pindar
- 3 Comic inversion and inverted commas: Aristophanes and parody
- 4 Framing, polyphony and desire: Theocritus and Hellenistic poetics
- 5 The paradigms of epic: Apollonius Rhodius and the example of the past
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Comic inversion and inverted commas: Aristophanes and parody
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The poet hero: language and representation in the Odyssey
- 2 Intimations of immortality: fame and tradition from Homer to Pindar
- 3 Comic inversion and inverted commas: Aristophanes and parody
- 4 Framing, polyphony and desire: Theocritus and Hellenistic poetics
- 5 The paradigms of epic: Apollonius Rhodius and the example of the past
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘Let's be serious.’
J. DerridaIn this chapter, I shall be discussing the voice of the comic poet in the city and, specifically, Aristophanes. Two interrelated questions provide a focus: how does the comic poet ‘speak out’ before the city? What is the role of parodic quotation in Old Comedy: the voice within the voice (‘speaking out’)? I begin with some general remarks about the role of poetry in the fifth- and fourth-century Athenian democratic polis, that leads into a discussion of the institution of Old Comedy in the light of modern treatments of carnival and the idea of ‘ritual reversal’. The second part of the chapter – focused on the Acharnians and the Frogs – looks first at the comic poet ‘speaking out’ to the city through the parabasis in particular, and second at how the poet uses other voices, especially the voice of tragedy, in parodic quotation.
THE CONTEST OF PUBLIC VOICES
When you meet people who praise the poet Homer as the educator of Greece and who say that in the administration of human affairs and education we should study him and model our whole lives on his poetry, you must feel respect and affection towards them as good men within their limits, and you may agree with them that Homer is the best of poets and the first of tragedians. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Poet's VoiceEssays on Poetics and Greek Literature, pp. 167 - 222Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
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