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A comedy tonight
In his latest book, James McGlew looks at comedy in Athens to understand
political life in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.
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The tragedies of ancient Greece are well known.
But comedies of that period are just as important to understanding the
political life in Athens during the late fifth and early fourth century
B.C.E.
So argues James McGlew, associate professor of classical studies and a
member of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, in his
latest book, Citizens on Stage: Comedy and Political Culture in the
Athenian Democracy, which has just been published by the University
of Michigan Press.
"During this period, new notions of political participation developed
- both supportive of democracy, and hostile to it - that reshaped concepts
of citizenship," McGlew writes.
In structuring Citizens on Stage, McGlew uses the career and works
of the playwright Aristophanes to define this period. Aristophanes was
the only comic playwright, whose works have survived intact. These plays
are the chronological background that McGlew uses to explain and interpret
the developments of the Athenian democracy in the late 5th and early 4th
century B.C.E.
"These plays often enacted fantastic stories of common individuals
triumphing over the social and political dilemmas of democratic Athens,"
McGlew says. "They rehearsed the emerging relationship between Athenians'
private lives and their political movements, reaffirming ties between
the desires of individual citizens and the will of the collective body."
McGlew says that these comedies helped to transform citizens' private
fantasies of personal power and pleasure into a collective possession
and a touchstone for each Athenian citizen's democratic identity.
The comedies of Aristophanes and others were big productions financed
by the city and presented to large citizen audiences at citywide festivals.
"They were very important events that were extremely popular,"
McGlew said. "Even when Athens was at war these productions went
on."
But the comedy portrayed in Aristophanes and other works of the time is
not at all like contemporary comedy. The comedies were distinguished by
satire as well as slapstick.
"They are a lot of fun, but often the plays were obscene,"
McGlew said, "and were often driven by fantasy-rich plots."
It is typical of these comedies that by the end of the play an "average
Joe" hero defeats self-interested and corrupt leaders (sometimes
actual leaders were named) and takes his place at the head of the city.
"The image of the comic hero, sometimes idealized, although often
a bit ridiculed, was a key site of political strife that shaped literature
and politics in late-fifth and early-fourth-century Athens,"
McGlew said.
McGlew first became interested in comedy in Athens when he was working
on his previous book, Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece.
The seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. was a time when tyrants ruled many
of the Greek city-states before virtually all were "kicked out or
killed."
"The Greeks however did not forget the extraordinary powers that
tyrants wielded," McGlew said. "The comic stage was one place
where they remembered those powers and celebrated the fact that they now
belonged to all citizens."
Around LAS
January 27 to February 9, 2003
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