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Old Comedy and Its Performative Rivals of the Fifth Century By Old Comedy and its Performative Rivals of the Fifth Century By Donald Sells A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto © Copyright by Donald Sells (2011) „Old Comedy and its Performative Rivals of the Fifth Century‟ Donald Sells Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto 2011 This dissertation analyzes Old Comedy‟s generic interaction with its primary performative rivals of the fifth century, tragedy and satyr play. While previous scholarship on this subject is concerned almost exclusively with paratragedy, I examine issues such as Old Comedy‟s engagement with satyr play and the frequently unacknowledged evidence for generic interaction in the comic iconography of Attic and South Italian vase-painting. Chapter One analyzes the earliest known intergeneric, comic experiment for which any considerable evidence survives, Cratinus‟ fragmentary (and parasatyric) Dionysalexandros. Chapter Two departs briefly from textual evidence and examines the visual record for strategies of intergeneric engagement in the comic iconography of Attic and South Italian vase-painting. Chapter Three signals the beginning of the study‟s play-based core and examines the best surviving evidence for cross-generic play in three productions of the Aristophanic corpus. This chapter‟s study of Peace (421 BCE) is followed by chapters on Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE) and Frogs (405 BCE), respectively. My approach, which considers both verbal and visual evidence for comic appropriation, allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the parody of tragedy and satyr play by comic playwrights, whose aggressive adaptation of performative rivals can be seen as central to an ongoing project of defining comedy as an essential polis institution in the latter half of the fifth century. ii Acknowledgments A person rarely gets the chance to thank all the people they should. The following individuals have made a significant difference in my life before and during my time as a doctoral student in the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto. My thanks go first and foremost to my dissertation committee: Jonathan Burgess, Martin Revermann, and Victoria Wohl. A number of old friends from back home have been key to getting me to this point. Greg Horne first introduced me to great literature at an early age. Josh Killion and Brian Malloy have shown me how to consider things from different perspectives. Loren Allen first got me interested in the Greeks. As an undergraduate, Ed Porcella and Albert Dragstedt taught me Greek while Tony Collins, Damon Tighe, and Gavin Wilgus provided endless diversion and constant (if unconventional) intellectual engagement. At Penn, D‟Maris Coffman was my loyal friend. In Toronto I have enjoyed the friendship of George Kovacs, Cillian O‟Hogan, Melanie Marshall, Kathryn Mattison, Tim („Potts‟) Perry, Mariapia Pietropaolo and the residents of 503 Manning. They have all helped me through the trials of grad school in different ways. I owe an enormous debt to a special group of junior faculty in my department: Ben Akrigg, Eph Lytle (who proved to me that one can polish a turd), Dimitri Nakassis, and Jarrett Welsh. These four spent countless hours of precious time – time which they did not have – shepherding me through the daunting process of academic professionalization. Christer Bruun, Elaine Fantham, John Magee, Hugh Mason, and Catherine Rubincam have given me advice and encouragement in all matters of teaching and research. Throughout graduate school I have also been blessed with the advice and support of a trio of great scholars in Old Comedy, Ralph Rosen, Doug Olson, and Ian Storey. I look forward to learning more from them in the future. I am particularly grateful to two other scholars of my department for their tireless, constant efforts on my behalf. Victoria Wohl, who took an immediate interest in my development, has almost been like a second supervisor and in her support of me she continues to go above and beyond what anyone could reasonably be expected to do. Much the same can be said of Michael Dewar, who has looked after me since the start of my graduate career and been an unfailing source of advice and encouragement in all possible matters. I only regret that I burdened him so often. Without his insights my graduate experience would have been far, far less rewarding. For patiently enduring the complications of the last several years, I thank Rohanna Green, as well as my sister, Melissa, and my brother, Ryan. I could never do anything without the unconditional love and support of my mom, the strongest person I know. I owe by far the greatest debt to my supervisor, Martin Revermann. I was definitely not a low- maintenance graduate student when I started at Toronto, and Martin has been everything that a supervisor could possibly be. Patient, engaging, honest, supportive, and inspiring, he has without a doubt made the biggest difference in my intellectual and professional development and I hope that someday, somehow I can return the favor. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Parasitic Parasatyrism in Cratinus‟ Dionysalexandros 26 Chapter 2: Visualizing the Comic - Rudeness, Revision, and Rivalry in Attic and South Italian Red-Figure Vase-Paintings 75 Chapter 3: Poetic Failure and Comic Success in Aristophanes‟ Peace 127 Chapter 4: Tragic Plots, Comic Worlds, and the Paratragic Self in 172 Thesmophoriazusae Chapter 5: Literary and Ritual Discourse in the Frogs of Aristophanes 225 Conclusion 283 Figures 287 Bibliography 291 iv Introduction I. Outline and Departures Although expressions like „intertextuality,‟ „parody,‟ and „paratragedy‟ each signify distinctive and sophisticated literary phenomena, none of these terms alone adequately captures the diversity, performative dynamism, and aggressive competitive spirit of comic appropriation in fifth-century Old Comedy.1 Self-conscious, unconstrained, and uncompromising, Old Comedy was the sole poetic form of Athenian drama‟s heyday to confront its generic rivals on the single stage shared by all three genres at the festivals of Dionysus. To increase their chances of success, the comic poets borrowed, modified, criticized, and stole from the works of their sister-genres, tragedy and satyr play, with utter impunity. This dissertation comprehensively examines the unique phenomenon of comic appropriation, hitherto studied in only piecemeal fashion, in three phases. The first is a presentation of the extant textual and material evidence for the comic adaptations of tragedy and satyr play. I examine what has traditionally been regarded as its primary evidence, comic texts, as well as the not unsubstantial visual evidence preserved in contemporary vase-painting. This material introduces a second, interpretive phase, which formulates the various strategies of comic appropriation and their dramaturgical function in any given comic plot. Insight about these first two areas will allow proper consideration of the third and central concern of this project: fifth-century intergeneric discourse as a function of Old Comedy‟s sophisticated process of self-definition. While there have been previous studies of individual aspects of this topic, no single analysis confronts the linguistic, performative, institutional, and generic characteristics comprising fifth-century comic appropriation as a dramatized phenomenon. This project 1 Linda Hutcheon‟s general definition of parody as „repetition with critical distance‟ (1985: 20) is the working definition for „comic appropriation‟ in this project. 1 expands the parameters of the topic through departures from traditional scholarship in ways that are both significant and necessary, beginning with genre. The poor survival of much fifth- century drama has confined the study of Old Comedy‟s intertextual engagement almost solely to examinations of Aristophanic paratragedy, that is, those cases where Old Comedy depends on its more noble and prestigious counterpart. Aristophanes‟ unique obsession with tragedy has exerted such a powerful influence on scholarship of comic intertextuality that significant (albeit limited) evidence for comedy‟s engagement with its other dramatic rival, satyr play, has languished in relative obscurity.2 The already difficult task of studying „parasatyrism,‟ the evidence for which is admittedly rarer than that of paratragedy, is made even harder by the loss of virtually the whole of satyr play itself. These facts make the survival of considerable evidence for one non-Aristophanic cross-generic production, Cratinus‟ Dionysalexandros, especially fortuitous: not only does this comedy engage satyr play over the course of an entire plot, it also pre-dates the explosion of cross-generic play which seems to accompany the rise of Aristophanes. The parasatyric Dionysalexandros thus affirms satyr play as a legitimate target of comic experimentation and offers a most appropriate (if unconventional) point of departure for the study of competitive cross-generic play in Old Comedy. In light of the two genres‟ significant overlaps in form and content (as opposed to tragedy), it is perhaps not surprising that Old Comedy would look to assert its command over that territory which it most conspicuously shared with its less prestigious rival. Composed in the 430s BCE by Cratinus, the leading comic poet of the generation before Aristophanes, the Dionysalexandros introduces a number of comic 2 For
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