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WISDOM IN INVERTED COMMAS: GREEK COMEDY AND THE QUOTABLE MAXIM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Matthew Wright
Matthew Wright*
Affiliation:
University of Exeter, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: m.wright@ex.ac.uk
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Abstract

Greek comedy is full of quotable maxims. According to a literal reading, the comedians might be seen as custodians of traditional gnomic wisdom, along with their tragic counterparts. Nevertheless, it is argued here that maxims in comedy are different from maxims in other contexts. Comic maxims typically appear ‘within inverted commas’, not just in a literal sense (because of their inherent ‘quotationality’) but in a figurative sense (because of their pervasive irony and self-consciousness). Examples from Menander, Antiphanes, Diphilus and others are used to demonstrate that the comedians can be seen as playing around with the content and form of traditional wisdom. Sometimes they seem to be poking fun at the maxim as a medium of expression, or at tragic maxims, or at the habit of quotation itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 68 , December 2022 , pp. 244 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Philological Society

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