Tel brilliantly weaves together affect theory, attentive intra- and intertextual readings of Old Comedy, and Aristophanes' own discourses of proto-canonicity to craft an argument of dazzling subtlety and complexity. This book is genuinely paradigm-shifting, changing the way we think about Aristophanic comedy, its social and emotional affects, and the complex politics and aesthetics of its ancient canonization. The most ... Read moreoriginal thing I've read on Attic drama in a long time!
Leslie Kurke, author of Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy is rich in suggestive hypotheses and striking demonstrations of Aristophanes' comic artistry and his relationship with his peers. Tel 's fresh approach and impressive familiarity with the vast literature on the playwright make this a challenging
and at times controversial
book that all serious scholars of Greek comedy should have on their shelves.
Charles Platter, author of Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres Tel brings well-honed philological skills and fluency with the affective turn in the humanities to bear on a very old question, namely that of Aristophanes' ascendancy. Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy opens up new perspectives on the materialist, sensory, and especially tactile strategies of this ancient dramatist. It will be of great interest to scholars of theater, rhetoric, comparative literature, and English
as well as essential reading for classicists.
Melissa Mueller, author of Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy Discerning literary parallels. . . . Recommended.
Choice Comedy was staged at the dramatic festivals of Athens, at the Lenaia and the Great Dionysia, where tragedy was also performed, and comedy is intertwined with tragedy in fascinating ways, aesthetically, politically, culturally. . . . For modern literary critics, this is all a goldmine: intertextuality and metatheatricality squared, as comedy restages tragedy in a contest of voices and the rampant purloining of language, all in the name of the political order of the city. Modernist and more traditional critics alike have dived into the fray. . . . Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy . . . is a fine example of the modernist trajectory.
Simon Goldhill Times Literary Supplement Show Less