Have you a preferred translator?Originally Posted by mortalterror
Have you a preferred translator?
Not really. I like them all, but the one I own is translated by Jack Lindsay for Bantam Classic's Complete Plays of Aristophanes.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
It's ironic though, how Greek theatre was hardly the birth of Drama - I suspect drama in at least one form or another existed long before the 5th century BCE. In truth, I suspect it has existed since very, very early periods - keep in mind, it evolved even in Greece out of a sort of folk ritual - as for Textual theatre, perhaps there is some credit there - there is clearly textual theatre alive as a tradition outside of the region centuries before that, but perhaps as refined theatre, it was something new.
I think the strength of the Greek theatre though, is its ability to shape the structure of subsequent drama over the "western" region, to the point where the genre solidified into a solid, textual form - the Aristotelian diagram, dominating up until even today.
But what of comedy? How has that solidified? I don't think, for instance, Shakespeare is very close to Aristophanes when it comes to a model - the Petrarchan influences on his work seem to overpower the classical models here - Roman work certainly got something of it, but lets be honest, how many people are reading those works today? Comedy in itself seems to have morphed more drastically than tragedy (from my view), and perhaps the Aristophanes model has taken a beating, especially perhaps with the emergence of Love as a literary theme in the middle ages, and its domination over the comedic (with the emergence of the wedding ending). Italian Comedia, for instance, seems far more liberal and varied than the earlier model too, with again, the romance dominating - though there are still the Roman stock figure presences - something which also carries forward to other genres, like Opera and French Theatre (notably Moliere). It's actually quite interesting to see how the emergence of the romantic plot has beaten up the old model severely - even the satirical comedies in other forms seem to have been gripped by this model - one thinks of Jane Austen, or even some remote source as Francois Villon.
JBI, I don't agree with that at all. What you are talking about would be the differences between New Comedy, Middle Comedy, and Old Comedy models. The Old Comedy ie "Aristophanes style" as represented by comedic duos, hyperbolic characters with big ideas, unusual/fanciful situations, and absurdly escalating actions is very much alive today. South Park very obviously takes Aristophanes for their model. South Park is lewd, vulgar, scatological, politically conservative, topical, frequently including real public personalities in their art and addressing important issues of their day. The plots often revolve around characters with an odd scheme to fix something they don't like about the world and taking that idea to it's extreme conclusion or reductio ad absurdum.
Then you have Bill and Ted, two slacker idiots who solve their relatively simple problem through time travel. There are any number of great duos in comedy like this from Abbott and Costello to Harold and Kumar, two stoners who embark on an epic journey to a fastfood restaurant.
What I find particularly interesting is Kevin Smith's film Mallrats. He manages to balance a New Comedy romance plot with an Old Comedy scheme subplot. The primary characters are your new comedy middleclass everymans, the loverboy with his clever slave/friend. Then you have Jay and Silent Bob, an old comedy team, cartoonish in their idiosyncrasy, with a plan to destroy a gameshow.
Moliere borrows from Plautus for his Amphytrion, and Shakespeare borrowed from him for The Comedy of Errors and Falstaff, but they both owe more to the Comeddia dell'Arte. South Park even borrows from them, as you can see in the episode Tweek vs. Craig where two boys are told that the other wants to fight them and are essentially forced into a fight for the other boys amusement. This is essentially the trick that Sir. Toby Belch plays on Viola and Sir. Andrew in Twelfth Night. These are more stock gags, than big ideas, but at least they are better than the comedy of manners.
I'd say that the Comeddia tradition is pretty much alive and well in the sketch comedy circuit and shows like SNL. Comedy of manners is more like Seinfeld. Then there is lampoon, burlesque, satire, farce, and various mixings of the genres and cross pollinations. There are many forms of comedy and each contains traces of it's antecedents if you look hard enough.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
The thing is, comedy has no straight definition, which on one hand makes it experimental and varied but on the other, it has less of an impact. We can't really study how good it is, because we have no model.
Tragedy, by definition, is the fall of a man/woman by an innate flaw and lack of self-knowledge. Iago is a villain, and falls due to his own nature, but because he recognises the flaw within himself, he is not tragic by definition. Because of tragedy's definition, there is a strong appeal and one could even take the structure of a tragedy and create a comedy.
Yes I can, but strangely it is authors like Iris Murdoch, rather than Aristophanes or Austin, that seem so dated as to be irrelevent.
As Social Historical studies, novels like Murdoch's The Bell or An Unofficial Rose, are fascinating, and the nearness to us in time, makes the strangeness of the social attitudes and mores even more strange.
As literature they are difficult, the actions motivations constraints and concerns of the characters are so out of time with now, its hard to believe that anybody would act that way.
It seems counter intuitive that novels of the 50s and 60s are less relevent than those of the ancient Greeks. I think it is the closeness in time compared with the distance in attitudes that causes this.
But Iago's a villain, not a hero. Surely the innate flaw and lack of self-knowledge refers to the hero/heroine of the piece, which would be Othello.
Harold Bloom is wonderfully ambivalent about Murdoch, check out his comments in "Genius" and "Novels & Novelists". I read several of her novels decades ago and she seemed a bit dated then. I tend to only retain a "warm glow" or "cold feeling" for novels I've read quickly that long ago. Murdoch is in the "cold feeling" camp! So i doubt I'll be reading her again, even though she makes Bloom's "top 100 geniuses of all time" ( probably at position 100 :-)
Bloom says "representation of character finally evaded her". Too right! I can't remember one character of hers, while retaining some glow of memory of characters in Lawrence, Hardy, George Eliot, etc. Bloom suggests this was due to a conscious philosophy of "unselfing". Maybe philosophers shouldn't write novels?
Bloom backs your thesis by calling them "very readable period pieces". I did find them readable and philosophical, like one of Bryan Magee's introductions to philosophy. No bad thing. But if all you want is readable philosophy then I'd pick Bryan Magee!
Why does Bloom include Murdoch then? Because "philosopher-novelists are rare in English, as opposed to French and German". This is a very weak reason! Why not include Russell, Magee or Mill if he wanted a readable philosopher?
Here's a quote form Murdoch herself that makes me less worried that my memory cells are shot:
"My problem is not being great. I'm in the second league, not among the gods like Jane Austen, and Henry James and Tolstoy. My characters are not as memorable as theirs"
Wow! Brutal self-honesty. You have to admire that.
Bloom suggests she pretends to being a great novelist through using moral intensity and complex social situations, but her characters are as weak as those of R.L. Stevenson's -- who beats her for story, imagination and visionary space. I'd agree with this except that I think Stevenson does generate *some* memorable main characters - Long John Silver, Dr Jekyll,... Only his secondary characters are as weak as Murdoch's.
I get the impression that Bloom only includes her in his top 100 because he enjoys criticising her so much, and had just forced himself through a bushel of her novels for some class or other!
The other thing making a tragic hero is the fall from a great position. You can get tragic villains, which have basically the same qualities as the hero- inability to recognise the evil in themselves and perhaps a villain by accident.
Tragedy the definition:
"drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity" - wordnetweb.princeton.edu
Nothing that says the protagonist needs to be felled by an innate flaw. I agree, they often are, but not always. Hadji Murad has no flaw. He is crushed between the rocks of Russian Orthodoxy and Fundamentalist Islam...
If the protagonist has no flaw it makes the tragedy all the stronger!
There are no tragic villains. When only villains fall it is a comedy. In As You Like It the Good Duke and Rosalind fall, but it is a light fall & they regain power. Hence comedy. The Bad Duke suffers a permanent fall. Still comedy.
Dictionary definition of tragedy:
a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction.
If the protagonist has no flaw it makes the tragedy all the stronger!
It would be an upsetting story, if they were the victim of a war or something, but it doesn't count as a tragedy in the dramatic sense as it doesn't give the audience any satisfaction- it's just merely frustrating or unfortunate, as there is no reason for it. If the protagonist made a bad decision and then paid for it, that would be tragedy.
Tragedy normally has a catharsis at the end- which is normally the character dying or realising their flaw upon dying. Brecht didn't really like the catharsis.
What about Humbert Humbert? Wouldn't you say he's a tragic villain? It depends how the villain is portrayed.
I admit, I had to research the titles of her books I read only 2 years ago.
Most of her main characters follow the same pattern, They all seem to spurn an oppotunity to simply reach out their hand and grasp happiness/fullfilment/their heart's desire. They blame society for this, but it is something within themseves, you suspect, is the real cause.
After several "me me me" decades I think this lack of self interest dates her stuff and leaves her characters wanting.
I'm currently reading The Sea, The Sea but it's very slow-paced.
what is that Kelby? It sounds like something based on xenophon's Anabasis
It's an Iris Murdoch novel about an ex-actor/director who retires to the sea (well, near it).
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
