Using both textual and iconographic sources, The Comic Body in Ancient Greek Theatre and Art, 440-320 BCE examines the representations of the body in Greek Old and Middle Comedy, how it was staged, perceived, and imagined, particularly in Athens, Magna Graecia, and Sicily. The aim of this study is also to refine knowledge of the relationship between Attic comedy and South-Italian comic vases (the so-called 'phlyax vases'). The first chapter in the book introduces comic texts and comedy-related vase-paintings in the regional contexts, analysing their various connections. The second chapter describes the evolution of the basic elements of the costume which constitute the generic comic body (masks, padding, and phallus). It also examines the characteristic traits of comic ugliness as well as its meaning. The third and fourth chapters consider the characterisation through costume in relation to verbal indications, analysing the cultural, social, aesthetic, or strictly theatrical
codes by which the spectators decipher the staged body. The study of the sexual codes in cross-dressing scenes, which reveal the artifice of the fictional body, leads to re-examining the modalities of comic mimesis. These chapters also shed light upon the way in which comic poets make use of the scenic or imaginary representation of the bodies of those who are targets of political, social, or intellectual satire. Finally the fifth chapter focuses on the body in movement. It deals with comic body language, the dramatic function of comic gesture and how words confer a kind of poetic and unreal motion to the body.
Author(s): Alexa Piqueux
Series: Oxford studies in ancient culture and representation
Edition: 1
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 363
City: Oxford
Tags: ancient greek theatre
Cover
The Comic Body in Ancient Greek Theatre and Art, 440–320 BCE
Copyright
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
ONE: Comedy and Vase-Painting
THE COMIC GENRE
Fragmentary texts
Variety and unity of Old Comedy
Continuity and inventiveness in Middle Comedy
COMIC VASE-PAINTING
Attic vases
Comic images from South Italy and Sicily
Metapontan and Apulian vases
Siceliot and Paestan vases
Campanian vases
ATTIC COMEDY AND ITALIOT VASES
From ‘phlyax vases’ to ‘West Greek comic vases’
Old and Middle Comedy in Greek cities in Magna Graecia and Sicily
Greek comedy in non-Greek areas and at Paestum
Texts and images
TWO: The Construction of the Comic Body: Masks, Phalluses, Padding, and the Comic Ugliness
THE MASK
The so-called ‘portrait masks’
Other original masks
The qualities of the ugly comic mask
Towards another aesthetic
THE PHALLUS AND PADDING
The phallus: general evolution and regional variations
The padding
Unity of bodies and the polysemy of comic ugliness
THREE: Signs of Genre and Sexual Identity Conveyed by Costume
PERCEPTION AND HIERARCHY OF SIGNS
SIGNS OF FEMININITY AND VIRILITY
Accessories and clothes
Hairiness and skin colour
SEXUAL INDETERMINATION AND CROSS-DRESSING: THE BAR ING OF THE COMIC MIME¯SIS
The ‘mimetic’ activity of Agathon
Serious models and comic imitations: the effeminate Dionysus and divine accessories
Cross-dressing, costume, and fiction
FOUR: Social and Moral Characterization through Costume
THE MAJOR ROLE OF SPEECH IN IDENTIFYING CHARACTER S IN ARISTOPHANES
CLOTHES
The social meaning of clothing
The unity of clothing and the comic body
THE TYPOLOGY OF MASKS IN THE VISUAL EVIDENCE
SPECTACULAR FACES AND BODIES IN THE TEXTS:AESTHETIC NORMS, SOCIAL SATIRE , AND VERBAL CREATION
Dark-skinned men
Women of artifice: indecent old women and hetairai
The pasty complexion of the poor, the sick, and Socrates
The spectacle of the philosophers in Middle Comedy
FIVE: The Body in Movement
COMIC SCHE¯MATA
General aspects of the comic sche¯ma
Caricatural acting in Aristophanes
Towards finer characterization through gesture in Middle Comedy: hetairai, parasites, and pornoboskoi
VISUA L EFFICACY OF GESTURES ON THE ARISTOPHANIC STAGE
The expressiveness of the comic body
Paratragic gesture
A body in perpetual activity
A BODY IN PERPETUAL MOTION
A continually transforming body thanks to the power of words
Conclusion
APPENDIX: CATALOGUE OF THE COMEDY-RELATED VASES MENTIONED IN THIS STUDY
UNKNOWN LOCATION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX I: COMIC POETS
INDEX II: VASE-PAINTERS
INDEX III: COMEDY-RELATED ARCHAEOLOGICAL MATERIAL
INDEX IV: GENERAL
