Reproducing Athens examines the role of romantic comedy, particularly the plays of Menander, in defending democratic culture and transnational polis culture against various threats during the initial and most fraught period of the Hellenistic Era.
Menander's romantic comedies—which focus on ordinary citizens who marry for love—are most often thought of as entertainments devoid of political content. Against the view, Susan Lape argues that Menander's comedies are explicitly political. His nationalistic comedies regularly conclude by performing the laws of democratic citizen marriage, thereby promising the generation of new citizens. His transnational comedies, on the other hand, defend polis life against the impinging Hellenistic kingdoms, either by transforming their representatives into proper citizen-husbands or by rendering them ridiculous, romantic losers who pose no real threat to citizen or city.
In elaborating the political work of romantic comedy, this book also demonstrates the importance of gender, kinship, and sexuality to the making of democratic civic ideology. Paradoxically, by championing democratic culture against various Hellenistic outsiders, comedy often resists the internal status and gender boundaries on which democratic culture was based. Comedy's ability to reproduce democratic culture in scandalous fashion exposes the logic of civic inclusion produced by the contradictions in Athens's desperately politicized gender system.
Combining careful textual analysis with an understanding of the context in which Menander wrote, Reproducing Athens profoundly changes the way we read his plays and deepens our understanding of Athenian democratic culture.

lgli/R:\Project-Muse\md5_rep\C0DCEFE6A888D80E8062EEA564C0B2AD.pdf

zlib/no-category/Susan Lape/Reproducing Athens: Menander's Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City_28127509.pdf

Project MUSE (https://muse.jhu.edu/)

Susan Lape

Princeton University, Department of Art & Archaeology

Princeton Electronic

Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2004

United States, United States of America

Princeton, NJ, United States, 2004

Course book, Princeton, N.J, 2004

Princeton, N.J, New Jersey, 2004

Princeton, N.J, cop. 2004

November 24, 2003

Princeton, 2008

PS, 2003

producers:
Muse-DL/1.0.0

Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-278) and indexes.

Cover 1
Title Page, Copyright 2
Contents 6
Abbreviations 10
1. Narratives of Resistance and Romance: Democracy and Comedy in the Early Hellenistic Period 18
2. Reproducing Democracy in Oligarchic and Autocratic Athens 57
3. Making Citizens in Comedy and Court 85
4. The Ethics of Democracy in Menander¬タルs Dyskolos 127
5. The Politics of Sexuality in Drama and Democratic Athens: The Case of Menander¬タルs Samia 154
6. The Mercenary Romance: Gender and Civic Education in the Perikeiromenᅣモ and Misoumenos 188
7. Trials of Masculinity in Democratic Discourse and Menander¬タルs Sikyᅤヘnioi 219
8. Conclusion: Inevitable Reproduction? 260
Bibliography 272
Acknowledgments 296
Index Locorum 298
General Index 304
Publisher:Princeton University Press,Published:2009,ISBN:9781400825912,Related ISBN:9780691115832,Language:English,OCLC:650308118
Reproducing Athens examines the role of romantic comedy, particularly the plays of Menander, in defending democratic culture and transnational polis culture against various threats during the initial and most fraught period of the Hellenistic Era. Menander's romantic comedies--which focus on ordinary citizens who marry for love--are most often thought of as entertainments devoid of political content. Against the view, Susan Lape argues that Menander's comedies are explicitly political. His nationalistic comedies regularly conclude by performing the laws of democratic citizen marriage, thereby promising the generation of new citizens. His transnational comedies, on the other hand, defend polis life against the impinging Hellenistic kingdoms, either by transforming their representatives into proper citizen-husbands or by rendering them ridiculous, romantic losers who pose no real threat to citizen or city. In elaborating the political work of romantic comedy, this book also demonstrates the importance of gender, kinship, and sexuality to the making of democratic civic ideology. Paradoxically, by championing democratic culture against various Hellenistic outsiders, comedy often resists the internal status and gender boundaries on which democratic culture was based. Comedy's ability to reproduce democratic culture in scandalous fashion exposes the logic of civic inclusion produced by the contradictions in Athens's desperately politicized gender system. Combining careful textual analysis with an understanding of the context in which Menander wrote, Reproducing Athens profoundly changes the way we read his plays and deepens our understanding of Athenian democratic culture.

"Reproducing Athens examines the role of romantic comedy, particularly the plays of Menander, in defending democratic culture and transnational polis culture against various threats during the initial and most fraught period of the Hellenistic Era."--Jacket.

Athenian history between the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C. and the end of the Chremonidean War in 260 is punctuated by one military disaster after another.

2022-03-08