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Space in Aristophanes: Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps

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Space in Aristophanes: Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps Space in Aristophanes: Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps Nina Papathanasopoulou Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 ©2013 Nina Papathanasopoulou All rights reserved ABSTRACT Space in Aristophanes: Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps Nina Papathanasopoulou This dissertation explores the treatment of the scenic and diegetic space in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps, and the comedies’ attitude towards a variety of domestic and civic spaces, taking into consideration the cultural context in which the plays were composed. I argue that by using visual creativity and the available staging resources, Aristophanes calls attention to the consequences of the Peloponnesian war on the Athenians’ civic and domestic life. Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps all literalize in an imaginative way the impact of the dysfunction of the polis – the assembly, the agora, the boule, the lawcourts – on the oikos and the householder. The plays not only explore what happens to the oikos itself, but also the implications for a polis in which the oikos loses its place of prominence. Acharnians displays an example of the polis’ dysfunction in an assembly meeting at the Pnyx, and traces an individual’s frustration with this polis and his journey back to his oikos. We witness the reactions of Dikaiopolis and the Acharnians, both of whom have been forced out of their oikoi, have had their properties ravaged, and experience their estrangement with nostalgia or anger. I argue that through a private peace treaty Dikaiopolis is able to return to his oikos, and then expand his domestic space in order to be reintegrated into a functional community. Knights presents an invaded oikos both as allegory for the dysfunction of the polis, and as a way of connecting Athens’ foreign policy decisions to the concerns of the individual Athenian householder. The play’s allegorical significance, present also in the double persona of Demos who represents both a household master and the people of Athens, conveys the impression that events taking place in the political realm have an impact also on the domestic lives of Athenian citizens. Wasps calls attention to the mismanagement of civic institutions by presenting the contrasting perspectives of a father and a son on particular domestic and civic spaces. Here I argue that the play presents the space of the oikos as a microcosm for the polis of Athens within which social and political divisions can be observed. The play focuses on the lawcourts’ accumulation of power within the astu as the single place in which all cases were tried during the war. By making the protagonist Philocleon defy his own oikos, Aristophanes turns his focus onto new problems in the management of individual households, and explores what happens when the oikos or the polis becomes a citizen’s primary locus of allegiance. All three plays present their central conflict in terms of a struggle to return to, enter, or escape from the oikos: spatial restrictions on the citizens imposed by war policy (Acharnians); the threat of invasion of the oikos by elements foreign to it (Knights); and the threat to the integrity of the oikos imposed by the dysfunctional jury system (Wasps). The first chapter looks at the importance of the visual component of Greek drama and provides a survey of previous works on this topic. I discuss the stage resources Aristophanes would be using; I explain my choice of examining together Acharnians, Knights and Wasps; and I give an overview of the plays’ historical context. Chapters two, three, and four are dedicated respectively to each of the three plays, and examine the space and staging of each play sequentially. In a brief conclusion I suggest that Aristophanes might be considered among the first authors to display interest in domestic economy, by turning the Athenians’ focus to the welfare of the oikos and its importance for the prosperity of the polis. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Chapter 1 – Introduction: Space and Staging in Greek Drama 1 Chapter 2 – The Dynamics of Space in the Acharnians 35 Chapter 3 – The Individual’s and the People’s Residence: 116 Demos’ Oikos in Knights Chapter 4 – Unity of Space and the Representation of the Oikos 172 in Wasps Conclusion 238 Bibliography 243 i Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to thank my adviser, Helene Foley, who showed enthusiasm and faith in me from the first time we met ten years ago up to this very moment. She shared her experience and passion for performance, and has supported me all along with invaluable advice and constant encouragement. I am deeply grateful to Elizabeth Scharffenberger for her detailed and constructive criticism on my work throughout all of its stages and for her continuous support throughout my years at Columbia. Her deep knowledge and love for Aristophanes’ comedy has influenced my research and thinking, and this thesis has become an intelligible project thanks to her. I am also very thankful to Elizabeth Irwin for her acute comments and for her insights especially on the plays’ political significance; to Nancy Worman, in whose class reading Aristophanes became delightful; to Ralph Rosen for his comments and feedback; and to Suzanne Saïd who helped me set this study in motion in its early stages. This project could not have been completed without my husband, Tobias Myers, who not only read every single version of this thesis and struggled in helping me form and articulate my thoughts, but also increased my love for theater and literature with his endless creativity, imagination, and support. My daughters, Nora and Natalia, though not of great help in the completion of this thesis, are a constant reminder of the beauty of music, dance, and performance, whose powerful experience was so ingrained in the lives of Ancient Greeks. I wish that the joys of performance can always be part of their lives. ii CHAPTER 1 – Introduction: Space and Staging in Greek Drama It has long been acknowledged that the visual elements of a theatrical performance are crucial to our understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of any given play.1 Critical appreciation of the visual component of Greek drama has come a long way since Aristotle first considered ὄψις, a play’s visual dimension, to be entertaining (ψυχαγωγικὸν μέν) but also the one of six fundamental parts of Greek tragedy that requires the least skill and has the least connection to the poetry (ἀτεχνότατον δὲ καὶ ἥκιστα οἰκεῖον τῆς ποιητικῆς).2 In his recent book on the stagecraft of Aristophanes Revermann writes: “...during a performance everything matters: every sound, every movement, every spatial arrangement, every prop, everything a character says or does. Nothing is insignificant. Theatre audiences, to deploy a vivid metaphor, are continually floating in a sea of meaning.”3 Revermann’s book Comic Business is the first extensive and systematic analysis of comic space that also incorporates theoretical work and aims to reconstruct the visual features of Aristophanes’ plays.4 In his analysis of how a theatrical performance produces meaning in ways other than verbal, Revermann considers the communicative process of semiosis, a playwright’s ability to use many theatrical signs, including visual ones, to produce a meaningful effect.5 These visual signs include paralinguistic signs, such as speech 1 Works on the visual dimension of Greek Drama are numerous; a few examples of earlier scholarship on the staging of tragedy include Taplin (1977 and 1978), Wiles (1997), and Rehm (1988, 1992, and 2002), while on comedy Dover (1972), Russo (1994), Revermann (2006) and Lowe (2006). 2 Aristotle, Poetics 1450b15-20: τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν ἡ μελοποιία μέγιστον τῶν ἡδυσμάτων, ἡ δὲ ὄψις ψυχαγωγικὸν μέν, ἀτεχνότατον δὲ καὶ ἥκιστα οἰκεῖον τῆς ποιητικῆς· 3 Revermann (2006: 50). 4 Revermann (2006). 1 articulation, rhythm, and speed, as well as utterances like laughing or crying; gestural signs, including any body movements; and proxemic signs, namely all that relates to the actors’ spatial positions onstage – their entrances and exits, and their onstage space configuration.6 The present study is concerned with one aspect of a performance’s visual dimension, namely the use of space and the employment of visual theatrical signs that inform our understanding of the space. In theater, space is “the manifest bridge which links the community with the world of the play”.7 This “space” includes three distinct but interconnected spaces. I borrow the terminology from Anne Ubersfeld and Michael Issacharoff.8 Ubersfeld distinguishes three kinds of space: theatrical space, signifying the physical space surrounding the entire theater area, namely the architectural givens of the theater; scenic space, which is the space represented onstage, the fictional overlay on the physical space where the actions takes place; and dramatic space, the space off-stage that is described in the text; action can take place in this offstage space, but not in front of the audience’s eyes. Issacharoff uses the phrase “dramatic space” differently, referring to any space that is described in the text whether onstage or offstage; he thus divides dramatic space into two categories: mimetic space, which is any space described but also shown and pointed to onstage, and diegetic space, which is any space that is described in the 5 Revermann (2006: 41-2) points out that semiosis is the process that includes how theatrical signs interact with each other, what meaning they create and how the audience understands them. In his exploration of the meaning of ‘theater performance’, Revermann also emphasizes that theatrical communication comes ‘sequentially and is of ephemeral nature’. He then points to the consciousness of both actors and audience in the fact that something is being performed (p.
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