Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy

M. S. Silk, Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy. Oxford: University Press, 2002. Pp. iii+ 456. ISBN 0-19-925382-X (paper), $26.95.

M. Silk's book, Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy, proposes a new approach to Aristophanic studies and, generally, a reevaluation of comedy as genre. Recently, scholars have well emphasized the relationship between Aristophanes' comedy and Greek tragedy. Thus, G. Dobrov, Figures of the Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics (Chicago 2000), has examined metatheatrical techniques through which Aristophanes humorously transforms previous tragic models. N. Slater, Spectator Politics: Metatheater and Performance in Aristophanes (University of Pennsylvania Press 2002) has suggested some political implications of the Aristophanic metatheater. Professor Silk addresses this issue from a different perspective. He inquires why Aristophanes' comedy relates to tragedy, rather than how it does so.

Comedy is an independent genre and there is no necessary link between comic and tragic. Then, why does Aristophanes create a connection between his plays and tragedy and, more specifically, why is he fascinated with Euripidean drama? Silk answers as follows: Euripides is an experimenter, redefining tragedy, inasmuch as Aristophanes himself is an experimenter, defining his own genre, comedy. Indeed, Euripides as reformer of tragedy becomes the main target of Aristophanic parody, in the Acharnions, Thesmophoriazusae, and Frogs. Therefore, the preoccupation with tragedy reflects Aristophanes' interest in exploring the possibilities of his own genre. Moreover, it inspires the dramatist to claim a certain "seriousness" of comedy. As Dicaeopolis, the main character in the Acharnions, declares, "Comedy (like tragedy) has sense of duty, dikaion, too," Ach. 500. The line conveys an essential poetic message, Silk argues, because it implies that comedy has its own right (dikaion)-in other words its own aesthetic territory. After setting this premise, a significant part of Silk's book is devoted to examining how Aristophanes has defined and expanded his comic realm, with respect to language, style, and dramatic composition. Although the entire discussion of Aristophanic comedies is compelling for the reader, I especially enjoyed the chapter dealing with characterization, a topic less exhaustively discussed. Silk handles the subject with subtlety and explains Aristophanic characterization in terms of discontinuity and "recreative presentation." In the realist tradition, which starts with Greek tragedy, characters are constrained by criteria of time and consistency, as outlined in Aristotle's...