Sex, Lies, and Politics: the Comedies of Aristophanes Continuing Studies, Spring Quarter 2013 Barbara Clayton

Course Goals:

• To ‘laugh’ with the ancient Greeks, i.e. to understand why Aristophanes was the most popular comic playwright of his day

• To appreciate the way in which these plays are literary masterpieces that have withstood the test of time

• To acquire an understanding of the trajectory of ancient Greek comedy, from the “Old Comedy” of Aristophanes and his contemporaries in the 5th century BCE, to the “New Comedy” which replaced it in the 4th century BCE

Schedule of Weekly Texts and Topics:

Week 1: Introduction to ancient Greek comedy  Comedy vs. the comic  Who was Aristophanes?  Political and historical context for his plays  The dramatic festivals: production and performance

Week 2: Wasps  The Athenian jury system  The quintessential comic hero: a bad dad?  World of the city (polis) vs. world of the individual (oikos)

Week 3: Clouds  Socrates and the sophists  Fathers and sons (again)  Why clouds?

Week 4: Birds  Utopian visions  Reconsidering the individual and his community  Nature and culture

Week 5: Lysistrata  A comic heroine: bringing gender into the mix  Aristophanes and the Peloponnesian War  Capitalizing on sex

Week 6: Women at the Thesmophoria  More gender-bending  Making fun of Euripides  Aristophanes and “metatheater”

Week 7: Assemblywomen  Gender-bending continued: if women ran the world  Post-war political changes in Athens  A new kind of utopian vision?

Week 8: Menander and New Comedy  The face of comedy after Aristophanes  Where did the politics go, and why?  Recapping where we’ve been: the legacy of Aristophanes

Grading: No Grade Requested: This is the default. C/NC: You must provide evidence that you have attended class (to the best of your ability) and read the assigned material. My suggestion is that you submit a brief reader’s response a/o question or two on a weekly basis, either via email or handed to me in class. Choose a passage that resonates with you—one that you find particularly beautiful, or intriguing, or perplexing—and tell me why. All students are encouraged to do this, whether or not you are taking the course for credit. Letter Grade: A 5-6 page paper on a topic of your choosing.