Bloomsbury (2020) h/b 280pp £90 (ISBN 9781350101524)
Seventeen papers presented in two parts (theory and practice), most arising from a 2017 conference at King’s College London, explore Aristophanic humour in its many (dis)guises. Peter Swallow suggests ‘the fundamental question’ to ask Aristophanes should be, ‘Why are you funny?’ Edith Hall suggests the volume ‘investigates how Aristophanic comedy aimed to make its audience laugh.’ Critics addressing this apparently simple question are likely to be following well-trodden paths, teaching grandmother to … (supply your own para prosdokian joke here).
But theory isn’t quite so simple: Nick Lowe (ch.2) opens his chapter ‘Beyond a Joke: Making Humour Theory Work With Aristophanes’ by making a challenging observation that ‘Classicists have an uneasy relationship with humour theory’. But the pursuit of a universal theory of comedy keeps returning to the well signposted paths of play, superiority, release and especially incongruity. And ‘this volume’ says Swallow, ‘aims neither to challenge outright nor adopt wholesale any one of these models.’
There is rather a variety of approach: Mario Teló wants ‘to consider implicit theorizations of laughter in Aristophanes’ plays … in light of Bataille’s notion of laughter as an encounter of sorts with death.’ Craig Jendza’s focus is on incongruity which he approaches through Grice’s ‘cooperative principle’ (CP) of human conversation and proposes a ‘broadened’ version to include the non-verbal humour which abounds in Aristophanes’ plays. Pavlos Sfyroeras tackles the difficult issue of laughter and collective trauma: Arginusae for example ‘is really what generates the very plot of Frogs’. Aristophanic satire treats other difficult topics: here there is no shying away from scenes of sexual violence (is there need to look away now?) and awkward questions are raised: what, for instance, makes melancholic performances funny?
Examples of the substitution of the unexpected for the expected (para prosdokian) may be among the most straightforward gags, but they do require a knowledge of the expected to be funny. Dimitrios Kanellakis contributes ‘A Grammar of Para Prosdokian’ which helpfully identifies and decodes the jokes which occur in Acharnians, Peace, Thesmophoriazusae and Wealth, concluding his chapter with a table offering the expected alongside the actual text.
In the final chapter David Bullen shares his experience of staging Aristophanes in a contemporary setting. His focus is on a very specific production—in November 2011 a fifteen-minute Clouds for the Royal Holloway fight against the threat of redundancies and the closure of the Classics department. Given a brief by Edith Hall, he had a specific aim, ‘To show what happens if you substitute education in how to make money for education in critical thinking.’ He concludes by looking briefly at current evaluation of a classical education and extolling interdisciplinary intervention—without which Aristophanes’ comedies ‘won’t be getting many laughs any time soon.’
The target audience for this is academic and not, by Goose, for those looking for an introduction to Aristophanic humour. The variety of approach included in this volume makes for a most stimulating academic discussion and Lowe’s observation that classicists and humour theory are not generally comfortable bedfellows is put to the test. A congress? Well, of sorts.
Alan Beale