A01=Susan Lape
Adultery
Ancient Greek comedy
Athenian Democracy
Author_Susan Lape
Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC)
Bribery
Cassander
Category=DSBB
Category=DSG
Category=JBCC
Category=JPHV
Chaeronea
Citizenship
Concubinage
Consideration
Courtesan
Credential
Criticism
Decree
Democracy
Democratization
Demosthenes
Dowry
Dyskolos
Economic inequality
Egalitarianism
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ethos
Exclusion
Gender role
Genre
Gorgias (dialogue)
Hellenistic period
Hetaira
Hubris
Identity (social science)
Ideology
Incest
Institution
Kinship
Lamian War
Law court (ancient Athens)
Legislation
Legitimacy (family law)
Marriage
Marriage plot
Masculinity
Mercenary
Miles Gloriosus (play)
Narrative
Neaira (hetaera)
Old Comedy
Oligarchy
Plautus
Political philosophy
Politician
Politics
Private sphere
Prostitution
Rhetoric
Romantic hero
S. (Dorst novel)
Seduction
Sexual Desire (book)
Slavery
Social relation
Social status
Subversion
Superiority (short story)
Terence
The Marriage Plot
Tragedy
V.
War
Warfare
Wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780691115832
- Weight: 595g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 14 Dec 2003
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
Susan Lape is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine.
