Research Catalog

Title

Thesmophoriazusae / edited with introduction and commentary Colin Austin and S. Douglas Olson.

Author

Aristophanes

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Austin, C. (Colin)
• Olson, S. Douglas

Description

cvi, 363 p. : col. frontispiece; 22 cm.

Summary

"Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae ('Women at the Thesmophoria Festival') was performed in Athens in 411 B.C., most likely at the City Dionysia, and is among the most brilliant of the poet's eleven surviving comedies. Thesmophoriazusae is the story of the crucial moment in a quarrel between the tragic playwright Euripides and Athens' women, who accuse him of slandering them in his plays and are holding a meeting at one of their secret festivals to set a penalty for his crimes. Rather than infiltrate the Thesmophoria himself, Euripides turns for help first to the effeminate tragic poet Agathon, and then, when Agathon refuses to cooperate, to a bumbling old relative ('Inlaw'), who is shaved, depilated, dressed in women's clothes, and sent off to argue on Euripides' behalf. Inlaw promptly makes a mess of things and is captured, and most of the second half of the play consists of his increasingly desperate attempts to get free by means of parodies of Euripides' Telephos, Palamedes, Helen, and Andromeda. Thesmophoriazusae is a brilliantly inventive comedy, full of wild slapstick humour and devastating literary parody, and is a basic source for questions of gender and sexuality in late 5th-century Athens and for the popular reception of Euripidean tragedy. Austin and Olson offer a new popular reception of Euripidean tragedy. Austin and Olson offer a new text of the play based on a fresh examination of the papyri and manuscripts, and a detailed commentary covering a wide range of literary, historical, and philological issues. The extensive introduction includes sections on the date and historical setting of the play; the Thesmophoria festival; the handling of Euripidean tragedy; staging (including a discussion of the Wurzburg Telephos krater); Thesmophoriazusae II; the textual tradition; and the history of modern critical work on the text. All Greek in the introduction and commentary not cited for technical reasons is translated, making much of the edition accessible to general scholarly readers."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• Aristophanes
• Euripides > Drama
• Thesmophoria > Drama
• Women > Drama
• Fasts and feasts > Greek religion > Drama

Genre/Form

Drama

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [xiii]-xxix) and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Aristophanes and his play -- Date and political background -- The festival -- Euripides and the city's women -- Staging -- Thesmophoriazusae II -- The manuscript tradition -- Modern work on the text -- Metrical symbols -- Sigla -- Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae -- Dramatis personae -- Test -- Commentary -- Greek index -- General index.

ISBN

0199265275 (hbk.)

OCLC

• 56655529
• SCSB-12198112

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library