"

Greek 807 Aristophanes (Graduate Seminar)

This seminar will serve as a general introduction to Aristophanes, although it will not pretend to being a survey. Our focus in class will be on Aristophanes' poetic imagination and the emerging languages of Greek poetics.

Much of the class will be given over to studying two plays in particular, Thesmophoriasuzae and Frogs, taken as examples of self-aware works of art and as witnesses to contemporary developments in thinking about art and poetry in all its genres. The first several weeks will be devoted to background issues in 5th- and 4th-c. theories of language and the earliest attempts at literary criticism, theory, and scholarship.

Students will be asked to read two additional plays, one of which will be Clouds (with Dover's commentary), the other being optional. Two translation exams will be administered, at mid-term and at the term's end (with some sight passages).

Requirements: two presentations, the first on either of the two required plays (and associated secondary literature/background), and a second at the end of term on a research topic leading to a final paper (20 pp.). Research papers needn't been restricted to poetics and can be on any topic or play including Thesmo. or Frogs; other possible topics might be formal elements of Old Comedy, performance, Aristophanes' comic rivals, history, politics, religion, reception, and so on.

Graduate Standing or permission of instructor

OCT's available at Shaman Drum; also Dover's Oxford comm.'s on Frogs and Clouds.