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In ancient Greek comedy, nothing is ever 'just a joke'. This book treats jokes with the seriousness they deserve, and shows that far from being mere surface-level phenomena, jokes in Greek comedy are in fact a site of poetic experimentation whose creative force expressly rivals that of serious literature. Focusing on the fragments of authors including Cratinus, Pherecrates, and Archippus alongside the extant plays of Aristophanes, Naomi Scott argues that jokes are critical to comedy's engagement with the language and convention of poetic representation. More than this, she suggests that jokes and poetry share a kind of kinship as two modes of utterance which specifically set out to flout the rules of ordinary speech. Starting with bad puns, and taking in crude slapstick, vulgar innuendo and frivolous absurdism, Jokes in Greek Comedy demonstrates that the apparently inconsequential jokes which pepper the surface of Greek comedy in fact amplify the impossible and defamiliarizing qualities of standard poetic practice, and reveal the fundamental ridiculousness of treating make-believe as a serious endeavour. In this way, jokes form a central part of Greek comedy's contestation of the role of language, and particularly poetic language, in the truthful representation of reality.

Classical wit and humor --- Greek drama (Comedy)

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"In ancient Greek comedy, nothing is ever 'just a joke'. This book treats jokes with the seriousness they deserve, and shows that far from being mere surface-level phenomena, jokes in Greek comedy are in fact a site of poetic experimentation whose creative force expressly rivals that of serious literature"--

Classical wit and humor --- Classical wit and humor. --- Greek drama (Comedy) --- Greek drama (Comedy). --- History and criticism.

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Comedy created a joyful mode of perceiving rhetoric, grammar, and literary criticism through the somatic senses of the author, the characters, the actors and the spectators. This was due to generic peculiarities including the omnivore mirroring of contemporary (scholarly) ideas, the materiality of costumes and masks, and the embodiment of abstract notions on stage, in short due to the correspondence between body, language and environment. The materiality of words, letters and syllables in ancient grammar and stylistic criticism is related to the embodied criticism found in Greek comedy. How are scholarly discourses embodied? The act of writing is vividly enacted on stage through carving with effort the shape of the letter 'rho' and commenting emotionally on it. The letters of the alphabet are danced by the chorus, the cognitive and communicative power of gestures and body expression providing emotional context. A barking pickle brine from Thasos is perhaps an olfactory somatosensory visual and auditory embodiment of Archilochean poetry, whilst the actor’s foot in dance is a visual and motor embodiment of a metrical foot on stage. Comedy with its actors, costumes, masks, and props is overflowing with such examples. In this book, the author suggests that comedy made a significant contribution to the establishment of scholarly discourses in Classical Greece.

Greek drama (Comedy) --- Discourse analysis, Literary. --- History and criticism. --- Literary discourse analysis --- Rhetoric --- Literary style --- Ancient Greek comedy. --- Classical Greece. --- early Greek scholarship. --- enactivism. --- Discourse analysis, Literary --- History and criticism

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This study analyzes how the structure of ancient Greek comedy betrays and responds to cultural tensions in the society of the classical city-state. Individual chapters treat Aristophanic and Menandrean comedies.

Greek drama (Comedy) --- Literature and society --- Political plays, Greek --- Politics and literature --- Social problems in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Problèmes sociaux dans la littérature --- Social problems in literature --- Sociale problemen in de literatuur --- 875-22 --- -Literature and society --- -Political plays, Greek --- -Politics and literature --- -Social problems in literature --- 875-22 Griekse literatuur: comedie --- Griekse literatuur: comedie --- Literature --- Literature and politics --- Greek political plays --- Greek drama --- Literature and sociology --- Society and literature --- Sociology and literature --- Sociolinguistics --- History and criticism --- Political aspects --- Social aspects --- Political plays [Greek ] --- Greece