Aristophanes and the Poetics of Surprise

Dimitrios Kanellakis

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783110676983
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110677164
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The purpose of this book is to examine the variety, the mechanisms, and the poetological intention of the effect of surprise in Aristophanic comedy, addressing the phenomenon not as a self-evident or unselfconscious element of comedy as a genre, but as an elaborate system which characterises the style of the specific dramatist. More precisely, the book analyses Aristophanes' most prominent verbal, thematic, and theatrical modes of surprise from a typological perspective, and interprets them as comprising the key area in which the playwright claims and demonstrates his artistic superiority over rival genres and individual poets. In line with this purpose, two parallel aims of the book are to provide an original commentary on the passages under examination, and to promote the study of modern performances – a practice which has so far been either restricted to Classical Reception or only theoretically acknowledged (if at all) by mainstream philological scholarship. This is a timely book on a topic of wide current interest across a range of interlocking disciplines: emotion studies, semiotics, narratology, information theory, and -most pertinently for this book- humour research.

1Verbal Surprise: Para Prosdokian Jokes

Aristophanes’ poetic arsenal comprises a plethora of techniques of verbal humour. Their scope expands over all levels of language. Phonologically, we encounter comic onomatopoeias (ἁνὴρ παφλάζει – παῦε παῦ’, Eq. 919; δωριστὶ – δωροδοκιστί, Eq. 230–3),66 alliterations (τίς ἡ πτέρωσις; τίς ὁ τρόπος τῆς τριλοφίας; Av. 94), rhymes (ὑμῶν μὲν αὐτῶν οὐχὶ δεξιώτερον, | κωμῳδίας δὲ φορτικῆς σοφώτερον, Vesp. 65–6),67 and consolidations (Διὸς ͜καταιβάτου, Pax 42), among other features. Morphologically, we find in abundance multi-word compounds (ὦ σπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανοπώλιδες, ὦ σκοροδοπανδοκευτριαρτοπώλιδες, Lys. 457–8),68 diminutives with various endings (κοτυλίσκιον, Ach. 459; Σωκρατίδιον, Nub. 223; μελύδριον, Eccl. 883; καὶ κῳδάριον καὶ ληκύθιον καὶ θυλάκιον, Ran. 1201),69 and as for augmentatives, for which there are only few suffixes in ancient Greek (κατωφαγᾶς, Av. 288; γάστρων, Ran. 200),70 Aristophanes compensates with imaginative superlatives (παμμίαρε καὶ μιαρώτατε, Pax 183; παροινικώτατος, Vesp. 1300; μονοφαγίστατον, Vesp. 923; αὐτότατος, Plut. 83).71 On vocabulary, the most discussed categories have been comic or ‘speaking’ names (Προξενίδης ὁ Κομπασεὺς, ‘Proxenides of Boaston’, Av. 1126)72 and obscenity: sexual terms, scatology, and abusive addresses (ὦ θερμόβουλον πρωκτὸν ἐξυρημένε, Ach. 119, comprises them all).73 A comprehensive study in Aristophanic hapax legomena is still missing. Syntactically, long catalogues are maybe Aristophanes’ favourite application of the accumulation technique, appearing both in asyndeton and polysyndeton:74

Ran. 112–5:

τούτους φράσον μοι, λιμένας, ἀρτοπώλια,

πορνεῖ’, ἀναπαύλας, ἐκτροπάς, κρήνας, ὁδούς, πόλεις, διαίτας,

πανδοκευτρίας, ὅπου

κόρεις ὀλίγιστοι.

Tell me about them, about the harbors, bakeries, whorehouses, rest areas, directions, springs, roads, cities, places to stay, the landladies with the fewest bedbugs.

Av. 881–8:

καὶ ἥρωσιν ὄρνισι καὶ ἡρώων παισί, πορφυρίωνι καὶ

πελεκᾶντι καὶ πελεκίνῳ καὶ φλέξιδι καὶ τέτρακι καὶ

ταὧνι καὶ ἐλεᾷ καὶ βασκᾷ καὶ ἐλασᾷ καὶ ἐδωλίῳ καὶ

καταρράκτῃ καὶ μελαγκορύφῳ καὶ αἰγιθάλλῳ

[Grant to] the Avian heroes and the Heroes’ children, Porphyrion and White Pelican and Grey Pelican and Red Hawk and Grouse and Peacock and Reed Warbler and Teal and Harrier and Heron and Tern and Black Tit and Blue Tit…

On semantics level, comedy loves suggestive language, like metaphors (ὁ πλακοῦς πέπεπται, σησαμῆ ξυμπλάττεται, Pax 869), similes (ὠς ἐλαπρός, ὤσπερ ψύλλο κατὰ τὸ κῴδιο, Thesm. 1180), personifications (καὶ πίθος πληγεὶς ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἀντελάκτισεν πίθῳ, Pax 613), and euphemisms (λάμποντι μετώπῳ instead of ‘bald’, Eq. 550);75 but comedy also loves raw realism (γυμναὶ παρίοιμεν δέλτα παρατετιλμέναι, | στύοιντο δ’ ἅνδρες κἀπιθυμοῖεν σπλεκοῦν, Lys. 151–2). Finally, on pragmatics level, one could make a long list of metatheatrical references, addressed to the audience or even to the technicians of the theatre (ὦ μηχανοποιέ, πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν, Pax 174; ἄγε δή, θεαταί, δεῦρο συσπλαγχνεύετε | μετὰ νῷν, Pax 1115–6), and aside jokes (Plut. 1032–7):76

ΓΡ.	ἀλλ᾿ οὐδέποτέ με ζῶσαν ἀπολείψειν ἔφη.
ΧΡ.	ὀρθῶς γε· νῦν δέ γ᾿ οὐκέτι σε ζῆν οἴεται.
ΓΡ.	ὑπὸ τοῦ γὰρ ἄλγους κατατέτηκ᾿, ὦ φίλτατε.
ΧΡ.	οὔκ, ἀλλὰ κατασέσηπας, ὥς γ᾿ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖς.
ΓΡ.	διὰ δακτυλίου μὲν οὖν ἐμέ γ᾿ ἂν διελκύσαις.
ΧΡ.	εἰ τυγχάνοι γ᾿ ὁ δακτύλιος ὢν τηλίας.

HAG	But he promised he’d never leave me as long as I live.
CHR.	Quite rightly; but now he considers you no longer alive.
HAG	In fact I’m pining away with grief, my dear man.
CHR.	No, you’re rotting away, if you ask me.
HAG	Why, you could pull me right through a ring.
CHR.	Provided the ring were the size of a barrel hoop.

The moods, or modes, or tropes of Aristophanes’ verbal techniques, i.e. the functions for which he uses the figures above, are equally abundant. Antithesis, accumulation, ambiguity, irony, satire, parody, and surprise are only some of those. Now, if we consider any possible combination of the aforementioned linguistic levels and modes (e.g. phonological ambiguities, morphological accumulations, lexical obscenities, semantic surprises etc.), we realise what a complex system verbal humour is and what a sizeable task it would be to attempt to map it fully, or to write a ‘grammar’ of comic language – if such a thing were even possible. As Willi notes, ‘the comic use of figures and tropes other than metaphors and personifications is much less well studied’, and therefore the present chapter can only aim at filling a small part of this gap.77

By focussing on the mode of ‘verbal surprise’ and sketching a conceptual outline, we can say that this mode comprises any kind of surprising sequence of linguistic units (phonemes, morphemes, lexemes etc). Here we can include nonsense, i.e. meaningless sequence (as with Pseudartabas in Acharnians and the Triballian in Aves); para prosdokian, i.e. unexpected sequence (ἐγὼ δ’ ἔκλεπτον ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ γε τῇ πόλει, Eq. 1226; νυνὶ δὲ δημαγωγεῖ | ἐν τοῖς ἄνω νεκροῖσι, Ran. 419–20); and oxymoron, i.e. contradictory sequence (οὐκ ἔνδον ἔνδον ἐστίν, Ach. 395). Dialectic variation, i.e. intralingual sequence, is also surprising when found in one and the same character (e.g. the Spartan Lampito uses the Attic form φροῦδος instead of *φρῶδος, Lys. 106).78 Last but not least, we may have surprising variations in tone, i.e. intergeneric sequence of linguistic units, mixing comic style with epic (e.g. the solemn dactylic hexametre tinged with Homeric Kunstsprache in Pax 1063–1114),79 lyric (ὦ θύμ᾽ ἄνευ σκάνδικος ἐμπορευτέα, Ach. 480), or preferably tragic style.

Such dividing lines are theoretical and in practice co-operation and overlapping usually occurs. It is also important to emphasise that these techniques (may) exceed the verbal sphere. Parody, to take the most characteristic example, usually also entails scenic surprises (disguises, gestures, songs etc). It is clear that verbal and non-verbal aspects may be intertwined (i.e. a funny theme will probably be expressed with funny words) but this is not binding on language. A comic theme may be conveyed with very serious words or with no words at all (comic silence), and can occur through plot and characterisation instead. This chapter is concerned with non-verbal aspects only insofar as they accompany verbally expressed surprises.

In his criticism of James Robson’s Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes, Ian Storey rejects the theorising of humour by saying that: ‘To explain a joke is to kill a joke, and I would argue that the same applies to analyses of humour on a larger scale’.80 Ian Ruffell discards para prosdokian in particular, by maintaining that: ‘The categories used, such as the para prosdokian or “surprise” joke or the classification of comic characters into quasi-Aristotelian types, have passed into the common language of Aristophanic criticism, but this approach is no longer particularly fashionable’.81 In answer to the latter view, it should go without saying that being ‘particularly fashionable’ is not a sine qua non of scholarship, especially in a discipline called ‘Classics’. The first dogma requires addressing more seriously, since it is often evoked.82 Leaving aside that ‘not killing the joke’ should be the concern of the comedian rather than of the scholar of comedy, one could answer that, in most cases, philology is not concerned with explaining whether a passage is funny, but rather how a p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Texts and Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Verbal Surprise: Para Prosdokian Jokes
• 2 Thematic Surprise: Appropriating Myths
• 3 Theatrical Surprise
• 4 Brekekekex, Surprise! Surprise!
• Afterword
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index Locorum
• Index Nominum et Rerum