Product Description
Originally published in 1908. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This rollicking new translation of Aristophanes' comic masterpiece is rendered in blank verse for dialogue and in lyric meters and free verse for the songs. Appended commentary essays--on ancient warfare, classical Greek rationalism, Athenian women, Athenian democracy and the Athenian festivals--offer lively and informative discussions not only of Aristophanes, but of the broader fifth-century social, political, and cultural context as well. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Sarah Ruden's translation of Lysistrata
I loathed Sarah Ruden's translation of the Aeneid (see my review of Frederick Ahl's magisterial translation for the nitty gritty), but this was much better.I'm sure it's because Aristophanes is more along Ruden's métier.Early blurbs for her Aeneid translation went on about how Ruden had gutted the "machismo" of Virgil's epic; hardly what you'd want for an accurate or even an enjoyable translation of the Aeneid.(It would be similar to a bunch of Hollywood hacks planning a film version of the Iliad: "Hey guys, this thing's been around for millennia, it's a founding stone of Western culture, but you know what, we could do it better - let's remove the gods from the story!...And Brad Pitt can star in it!")

Ruden's translation of the Aeneid sacrificed Virgil's grandeur and "machismo" for brevity and glibness.I found it a failure, but here she applies the same principles more successfully.No doubt because Aristophanes himself is glib, not to mention vulgar - something Ruden does not shy from, thankfully.I did find some of her translation-choices a bit strange; several times the more literal reading of the text Ruden provides in the footnotes works better than her actual translation.It seems Ruden has at times "dumbed down" the text, perhaps in the hopes that it could be read by the general audience.This is madness.What "general" reader in today's day and age would just happen to pick up Lysistrata?This sort of material is only read by those with a hearty interest in history or the classics; translating with the unwashed masses in mind is foolishness.

With that said, Ruden strives to retain Aristophanes' biting humor and R-rated dialog.To further compound her "general reader" aim, Ruden does not shy from dropping F-bombs and other sexually-graphic lines into her text; there goes the idea that this publication might be intended to grab the interest of high schoolers, who would otherwise yawn through the play.The graphic language would have it banned from any school.Beyond that Ruden does a good job explaining the esoteric jokes in her footnotes.Aristophanes wrote and lived in a different world than ours, so most of his jokes and references are nonsensical for us in the modern day.Ruden capably holds our hand through the more arcane sections, providing useful suggestions and interpretations for scenes that still have scholars scratching their heads.

As for the play, the setup is promising: tired of the endless war between Sparta and Athens, Lysistrata, a young Athenian woman, talks her fellow women (both in Athens and in Sparta) into withholding sex from their warring husbands.The objective: the men will become so sexually frustrated that they will agree to any terms their wives demand; the terms, of course, will be instant peace between the two countries.Any writer could come up with a wealth of plots from this idea, but again, Aristophanes was writing long in the past.Rather than the wacky comedy a modern-day audience would expect, the play instead consists of protracted arguments between the men's chorus and the women's chorus.Only one setpiece seems to me modern: when Lysistrata and her fellow conspirator Myrrhine tease and toy with the already-about-to-blow Cinesias, Myrrhine's husband.

Ruden rounds out the book with a few essays on Greek history.Again, these are written with the "general reader" in mind, and again it's a poor idea.Most who would pick this up will already have a grounding in the history and culture in which it was written, so Ruden's essays don't offer much new food for thought.The book itself looks good though, an eye-scalding pink, with a reproduction of a Norman Lindsay illustration for the cover (taken from his series of illustrations for Jack Lindsay's 1920 Lysistrata translation).

Highly readable,but(t).....?
Neither the creaky and surprisingly prudish anonymous translation published by Dover Thrift Editions nor the profanity-laden, anachronistic but highly readable translation by Sarah Ruden is the perfect classroom edition of Lysistrata.Between the two, I guess I'll start teaching Ruden's version, especially since the footnotes and other apparatus are genuinely scholarly and indicate where liberties are taken.

But is the language Ruden chooses really the modern equivalent of how Aristophanes would have sounded to 5th-Century BCE ears?Visually, the play is inescapably bawdy, but is Aristophanes' dialog really so much the equivalent of today's stand-up comedians who "work blue" and use strings of low-minded profanity instead of clever innuendo to be amusing?

Personally, I prefer the Dudley Fitts translation, which seems to strike just the right balance between high-tone literal and "urban" street-talk.Unfortunately, the Fitts translation seems to be unavailable in an inexpensive, single-title edition.Any chance Dover might get the rights to it and retire their stilted anonymous translation?

[...]. ... Read more

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Aristophanes' "Esslesiazusae", written in the early 4th Century BC, marks a crossroads in his career. Post-dating the Peloponnesian War, it reflects a late change in his writing and a much changed society. This edition includes the complete text. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1898.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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In comedy, the comic occurs when the characters' actions appear to fail when judged by the standards of the audience. As speaking is the most important form of action in Aristophanes' plays, it is here that the main source of the comic is to be found. Most of the aspects of language comic have already been well-researched, particularly in the realm of semantics (linguistic jokes etc.). Little is known, however, about the large area of the comic based on language pragmatics, which arises when modes of speech and speech attitudes are wrongly used in the dramatic context. This book investigates how and why comic effect results for example from the use of foreign languages and dialects, inappropriate metre, text-types and statement-types, and word-for-word repetitions and breakdowns in communication. In conclusion, the first comprehensive analysis of Aristophanes' prologue technique shows how elements of entertainment and motivation alternate in a way appealing to the audience. ... Read more

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This book examines the plays of the Greek comic writer Aristophanes and attempts to reconstruct the responses of the original audiences by using anthropological techniques to compare the plays with those Greek myths and rituals that share similar story patterns or subject matter.It is the first book to apply this type of analysis systematically to all the comedies, and also differs from earlier studies in that it does not impose a single interpretative structure on the plays.All Greek is translated. ... Read more

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This book provides a new interpretation of the nature of Old Comedy and its place at the heart of Athenian democratic politics. Professor Sidwell argues that Aristophanes and his rivals belonged to opposing political groups, each with their own political agenda. Through disguised caricature and parody of their rivals' work, the poets expressed and fuelled the political conflict between their factions. Professor Sidwell rereads the principal texts of Aristophanes and the fragmented remains of the work of his rivals in the light of these arguments for the political foundations of the genre. ... Read more

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Aristophanes' comedies have stood the test of time as some of the greatest comic literature ever produced. While there have been numerous commentaries on Aristophanes and his world, until now there has been no systematic philosophical treatment of his comedies. In Philosophy and Comedy, Bernard Freydberg illuminates the philosophical insights in Aristophanes' texts by presenting close readings of Clouds, Wasps, Assemblywomen, and Lysistrata, addressing their comic genius at the same time. Freydberg challenges notions that philosophy is best served by a tragic disposition and arrives at a new assessment of the philosophical importance of comedy. ... Read more

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In Aristophanes' Male and Female Revolutions author Kenneth M. De Luca offers a detailed study of two of Aristophanes' plays and reveals how each illuminates the other and the question of the rule of law through the lens of democracy. De Luca uses classical thought to clarify contemporary and foundational issues in political theory. ... Read more

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Aristophanes, the great Greek Comedian, wrote perhaps forty comedies of which only the eleven presented here have survived. Renowned in his own time as a master of wit and satire, Aristophanes’ comedies are almost modern in their irreverent look at, what was then, contemporary society. No subject was too elevated for Aristophanes’ critical insight and sharp barbs. He poked fun at pomposity and posturing wherever he found it. These eleven comedies are a treasury of bawdy humor that still irks straight-laced moralists.

Included in this volume are all eleven of Aristophanes existing plays:

The Knights: 424 B.C. Attacks the political leader Cleon and his war policy.
The Acharnians: 426 B.C. Satirizes the war and makes fun of Euripides.
Peace: 422 B.C. The same theme which enlarges on the blessings of Peace
Lysistrata: 411 B.C. A burlesque conspiracy by the women to force a peace.
The Clouds: 423 B.C. Satirizes Socrates, the Sophists and the !New Education.
The Wasps: 422 B.C. Makes fun of the Athenian passion for litigation.
The Birds: 414 B.C. Describes a new and improved city, Cloud-cuckoo-town.
The Frogs: 405 B.C. A satire on Euripides and the New Tragedy.
The Thesmophoriazusae: 412 B.C. Another literary satire of Euripides.
The Ecclesiazusae: 392 B.C. Pokes fun at ideal Utopias, like Plato's Republic.
Plutus: 408 and 388 B.C. A whimsical allegory more than a regular comedy.

These plays formed the foundation of the art form of the satire; using humor to make a political or philosophical point at the expense of those persons and institutions too powerful to be directly attacked. They stand as an amusing monument to the ingenuity and wit of the Ancient Greeks.

Other books in this series include:

Aristotle - Ethics And Politics
Homer -The Iliad And the Odyssey
The Greek Classics: Aeschylus - Seven Plays
The Greek Classics: Euripides - Nineteen Plays
The Greek Classics: Sophocles - Seven Plays
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Comic Deception
IGNORE the wretched (obviously publisher-promoting) 5-star bombastic reviews (I can't imagine how these texts deserve even a single star, and it's a pity Amazon doesn't allow no-star reviews), and be warned against the whole GREEK CLASSICS series: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and this Euripides edition. For a start, many lines have disappeared: eg some of those occurring in the scene between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon in Aeschylus; in spite of the uninterrupted pagination, more than half of Euripides' ORESTES is missing (I ask if this incomplete text made sense at all to those who boast of and insist on the book's 'completeness'); lines from CYCLOPS have also gone missing obviously for reasons of decorum; this, of course, is also true of the bowdlerized Aristophanes edition, where everyone behaves according to Victorian morality (I don't understand how this series' Aristophanes - according to a reviewer - is 'bawdy' and 'rude'). The absence of annotations and the presence of countless typos is nothing, compared to the translations themselves. Made between the 18th and early 20th centuries, these out-of-copyright translations have long been past their sell-by dates. The verse quality is so poor that it insults Greek drama (talk of 'Greek' when particular characters are 'translated' into their 'Roman' counterparts): written in embarrassingly tortuous syntax, the stilted lines read like some cheap and desperate attempt at reproducing 'mythical' versions of the Bible and Shakespeare. The whole effect is 'tragically' hilarious: if those (especially 20th-Century) translators had incorporated innumerable thee's and thou's into their texts in the hope of evoking the original Greek, they were laughably mistaken. According to one reviewer, the Euripides edition 'is a book you can be proud to own'; another, having finished the 'entire set' (ie all four volumes), is 'looking forward to re-reading them': misled by the previous infantile reviews into purchasing this series, I am ashamed of making a donation of it to any library, though a reviewer considers this to be '[a]n excellent addition to any classical library'. Did I mention that almost all of these translations are available online for free? Mould is, indeed, gold.

Funny Stuff Across the Ages

This collection of the surviving works of Aristophanes is a time capsule that shows quite clearly that humor and a sense of fun were present even in ancient Greece.The sometimes crude and crass jocularity had a point - to skewer the opposition.It has succeeded wildly throughout the ages.Parody and ridicule are as effective as they are timeless, particularly when really funny.

As you read Aristophanes, and find yourself laughing time and again, you can't help but recognize some of the jokes and ask yourself how many times in the history of the world have these jibes been reused.Some of them have been so overworked that they have lost much of their zing - but it is marvelous to recognize that they were probably used first, and best, by Aristophanes.

It is important to note that humor is just as important a part of a classical education as is drama or science.This book is one of the very best examples. ... Read more

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Aristophanes is the only author of Greek Attic comedy whose work survives in any form beyond fragments. His eleven surviving comedies reflect the spirit of Athens in the golden age and its unique freedom of speech. This anthology brings together all the most important contributions to the study of Aristophanes; it addresses a range of subjects from the classic question of Aristophanes' relationship to contemporary politics to more modern issues such as performance context, the interaction between fifth century comedy and tragedy, and gender ... Read more

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Spectator Politics is the first major study of metatheatre, or theatrically self-conscious performance, in Aristophanes. Using a reception-based performance criticism, Niall Slater elucidates the comic effectiveness of the earliest surviving comedies in the Western tradition. Slater demonstrates that Aristophanes employed metatheatre not simply to entertain but also to teach his audience how to read and interpret performance in other key public venues of the ancient democracy of Athens, such as performances in the political assembly and law courts. Aristophanes was, Slater contends, the first performance critic.

Spectator Politics shows how Aristophanes' comedy served the Athenians by helping them to become active political participants, teaching them to see through deceptive performances, whether on stage or in the political sphere. His comedies use self-conscious performance to encourage the public to move out of the role of passive consumers of spectacle and to reengage the political process. Aristophanes' critique of performance prefigures much in the performance-dominated culture of the modern American political scene.

Throughout, detailed readings of the original stagings illuminate the plays for today's audiences and performers, while Slater's cultural critique provides much for those interested in Athenian democracy and its lesson for the contemporary political scene. Spectator Politics offers a salutary demonstration of the power of art to expose and resist the performance powers of would-be demagogues.

Product Description
Publisher: London J. MurrayPublication date: 1838Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more