Aristophanes Popular Books
Aristophanes Biography & Facts
Aristophanes (; Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοφάνης, pronounced [aristopʰánɛːs]; c. 446 – c. 386 BC) was an Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries. Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates, although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher. Aristophanes' second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through that play's Chorus, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all." Etymology The English name Aristophanes comes from the Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοφάνης meaning 'one who appears best', from ἄριστος (áristos, lit. 'best') and φανής (phanḗs) from the verb φαίνω, lit. 'to appear'. Biography An Athenian citizen, Aristophanes came from the deme of Kydathenaion. His father was Philippus from the Attic phyle (clan) of Pandionis and his mother was Zenodora. His family was believed to have owned property on the island of Aegina. Little is known about Aristophanes' life, his plays being the main source of biographical information. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the chorus to speak on behalf of the author during an address called the parabasis, where some biographical facts can usually be found. These facts, however, relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist and the plays contain few clear and unambiguous clues about his personal beliefs or his private life. He was a comic poet in an age when it was conventional for a poet to assume the role of teacher (didaskalos), and though this specifically referred to his training of the chorus in rehearsal, it also covered his relationship with the audience as a commentator on significant issues. Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience, yet he also declared that "other times" would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays. He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist yet his plays consistently espouse opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts (notably Euripides, whose influence on his own work however he once grudgingly acknowledged), in politics (especially the populist Cleon), and in philosophy/religion (where Socrates was the most obvious target). Such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions. It has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience and to win prestigious competitions. His plays were written for production at the great dramatic festivals of Athens, the Lenaia and City Dionysia, where they were judged and awarded prizes in competition with the works of other comic dramatists. An elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is much uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10,000 at the Theatre of Dionysus. The day's program at the City Dionysia for example was crowded, with three tragedies and a satyr play ahead of a comedy, but it is possible that many of the poorer citizens (typically the main supporters of demagogues like Cleon) occupied the festival holiday with other pursuits. The conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience. The production process might also have influenced the views expressed in the plays. Throughout most of Aristophanes' career, the Chorus was essential to a play's success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus, a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. A choregus could regard his personal expenditure on the Chorus as a civic duty and a public honour, but Aristophanes showed in The Knights that wealthy citizens might regard civic responsibilities as punishment imposed on them by demagogues and populists like Cleon. Thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, on whose generosity all dramatists depended for putting on their plays. When Aristophanes' first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation (the victors at Marathon) yet they are not jingoistic, and they are staunchly opposed to the war with Sparta. The plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. By the time his last play was produced (around 386 BC) Athens had been defeated in war, its empire had been dismantled and it had undergone a transformation from being the political to the intellectual centre of Greece. Aristophanes was part of this transformation and he shared in the intellectual fashions of the period—the structure of his plays evolves from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play, Wealth II, it more closely resembles New Comedy. However it is uncertain whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters (now lost). He won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians (also now lost). It was usual for foreign dignitaries to attend the City Dionysia, and The Babylonians caused some embarrassment for the Athenian authorities since it depicted the cities of the Delian League as slaves grinding at a mill. Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the polis and possibly took legal action against the author. The details of the trial are unrecorded but, speaking through the hero of his third play The Acharnians (staged at the Lenaia, where there were few or no foreign dignitaries), the poet carefully distinguishes between the polis and the real targets of his acerbic wit: Arist.... Discover the Aristophanes popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Aristophanes books.
Best Seller Aristophanes Books of 2024
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Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy
Mario TelòThe Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Com...
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Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age
W E. GladstoneStudies on Homer and the Homeric Age are a comprehensive 3volume work that features the history of the ancient Greek literature, focusing on the Homeric Question – concerning by wh...
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Aristophanes
James RobsonThis accessible introduction to the work of one of the world's greatest comic writers tackles key questions posed by Aristophanes' plays, such as staging, humour, songs, ob...
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A Companion to Aristophanes
Matthew C. Farmer & Jeremy B. LefkowitzProvides a comprehensive and systematic treatment of the life and work of Aristophanes A Companion to Aristophanes provides an invaluable set of foundational resources for undergra...
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Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres
Charles PlatterThe comedies of Aristophanes are known not only for their boldly imaginative plots but for the ways in which they incorporate and orchestrate a wide variety of literary genres and ...
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Delphi Complete Works of Aristophanes
AristophanesThe Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Latin and Greek texts. This comprehensive eBoo...
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Plato and Aristophanes
Marina MarrenIn Plato and Aristophanes, Marina Marren contends that our search for communal justice must start with selfexamination. The realization that there are things that we cannot know ab...
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Aristophanes the Democrat
Keith SidwellChallenging the current view that Old Comedy is politically neutral, Keith Sidwell argues that poets belonged to recognisable political circles and used their comedy to disparage t...
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The Frogs
AristophanesVisiting the underworld, the god Dionysus seeks the counsel of the dead tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides on how to bring good writing back to Athens. A fierce debate full of sca...
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Lysistrata
Aristophanes, Douglass Parker & Judith FletcherIn Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war.
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The Thesmophoriazusae
AristophanesThesmophoriazusae was performed in Athens in 411 BCE, most likely at the City Dionysia, and is among the most brilliant of Aristophanes' eleven surviving comedies. It is the story ...
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The Complete Aristophanes Collection
AristophanesKarpathos publishes the greatest works of history's greatest authors and collects them to make it easy and affordable for readers to have them all at the push of a button. Al...
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Complete Plays of Aristophanes
AristophanesA poet who hated an age of decadence, armed conflict, and departure from tradition, Aristophanes' comic genius influenced the political and social order of his own fifthcentury Ath...
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Gesammelte Werke des Aristophanes
Aristophanes & A. HoffmannDie Werke des mit bedeutsamsten griechischen Komödiendichters Aristophanes sorgsam zusammengetragen in EBookAusgabe. Diese umfangreiche Sammlung der Werke eines des bedeutendsten S...
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Lysistrata and Other Plays
Aristophanes & Alan H. SommersteinThe Acharnians/The Clouds/Lysistrata'We women have the salvation of Greece in our hands'Writing at a time of political and social crisis in Athens, the ancient Greek comic playwrig...
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The Greek Way
Edith HamiltonEdith Hamilton buoyantly captures the spirit and achievements of the Greek civilization for our modern world.In The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton captures with "Homeric power and simpl...
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The Poetics of Aristotle
AristotleThe Poetics of Aristotle is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In it, Aristotle offers an account o...
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Die Rede des Aristophanes in Platons Symposion
Hendrik KeilhauerDies ist eine Zusammenfassung der Rede des Komödiendichters Aristophanes in Platons Symposion über die Gestalt des Eros und die 'Kugelmenschen'.
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Aristophanes
Carlo Ferdinando RussoCarlo Ferdinando Russo's book has been a seminal work on Aristophanes since its publication in Italy in 1962. In his detailed analysis, Russo considers the plays as libretti for ac...
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Three Plays by Aristophanes
Jeffrey HendersonThese three plays by the great comic playwright Aristophanes (c. 446386 BCE), the wellknown Lysistrata, and the less familiar Women at the Thesmophoria and Assemblywomen, are the e...
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Aristophanes
W. Lucas CollinsWith centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are w...
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Studies of the Greek Poets
John Addington Symonds"Studies of the Greek Poets" in 2 volumes is one of the bestknown works by the English poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds that features a comprehensive survey ...
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The Ecclesiazusae
AristophanesAristophanes' "Esslesiazusae", written in the early 4th Century BC, marks a crossroads in his career. Postdating the Peloponnesian War, it reflects a late change in his writing and...
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Study Guide to The Plays of Aristophanes
Intelligent EducationA comprehensive study guide offering indepth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Aristophanes, is popularly known as the Father of Comedy. Titles in this study ...
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Aristophanes
AristophanesNew English versions of Lysistrata, The Frogs, The Birds, and Ladies' Day. "Thanks to Dudley Fitts...we can appreciate Aristophanes' vigor, his robust style, his scorching wit, his...
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The Uncoupling
Meg WolitzerFrom the New York Timesbestselling author of The Interestings and The Female Persuasion, a funny, provocative, revealing novel about female desire. When the elliptical new d...
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Socrates and Aristophanes
Leo StraussIn one of his last books, Socrates and Aristophanes, Leo Strauss’s examines the confrontation between Socrates and Aristophanes in Aristophanes’ comedies. Looking at eleven plays, ...