Lefkowitz, Jeremy B.

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Aristophanes\u27 Bestiary

 Swarthmore CollegeWorksClassics Faculty Works 4-1-2013 Aristophanes' Bestiary Jeremy B. Lefkowitz Swarthmore College, jlefkow1@swarthmore.edu Let us know how access to this work benefits you. Follow this and additional works at: http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-classics/  Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation Jeremy B. Lefkowitz. (2013). "Aristophanes' Bestiary". Classical Review. Volume 63, Issue 1. 39-41. http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-classics/2 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the Swarthmore College Libraries. It has been accepted for inclusion in Classics Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. The Classical Reviewhttp://journals.cambridge.org/CARAdditional services for The Classical Review:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereC. Corbel-Morana Le Bestiaire d'Aristophane.(Ètudes Anciennes, Série Grecque 144.) Pp. 350,ills. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012. Paper, €45.ISBN: 978-2-251-32680-1.Jeremy B. LefkowitzThe Classical Review / Volume 63 / Issue 01 / April 2013, pp 39 - 41DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X12002259, Published online: 01 March 2013Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X12002259How to cite this article:Jeremy B. Lefkowitz (2013). The Classical Review, 63, pp 39-41 doi:10.1017/S0009840X12002259Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 130.58.64.71 on 09 Mar 2014and otherwise) as the primary cultural media of the ancient world. R.’s engagement withthe notion of popular culture is not always fully elaborated but he is certainly leading hisreaders on a new scholarly path.The book offers a novel and systematic approach to humour in Old Comedy. AlthoughR. focusses on the second half of fifth-century Athens and its political and cultural activity,his methodological tools and choice of thematic interpretation(s) are applicable beyondAristophanes; they could be used as an interpretational template applicable to any kindof anti-realistic performative or literary humour. Most importantly, like those with ‘first-hand experience’ R. demonstrates ‘a real understanding of comedy and cognition’ (p. 6)yet he is sympathetic to its effects, justifying that comedy is the art of the impossiblebecause it manages to ‘change our perception of the world and with that comes our poten-tial for change’ (p. 429).UCGS: Umeå University, Sweden ANNA FOKAanna.foka@ucgs.umu.seTHE CLASSICAL REVIEW 39AR I S TOPHANES ’ BEST IARYCO R B E L -M O R A N A ( C . ) Le Bestiaire d’Aristophane. (ÈtudesAnciennes, Série Grecque 144.) Pp. 350, ills. Paris: Les Belles Lettres,2012. Paper, E45. ISBN: 978-2-251-32680-1.doi:10.1017/S0009840X12002259J. Taillardat’s influential Les Images d’Aristophane: Études de langue et de style (1965)contains the memorable line: ‘ce qui intéresse Aristophane, c’est essentiellement l’homme’(§14). And yet, as C.-M. points out in the opening pages of this revised version of her 2002thèse de Doctorat, perhaps the most famous line from Aristophanic comedy is spoken by afrog: βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ (‘sans doute le vers le plus célèbre d’Aristophane’, p. 9).Indeed, animals are ubiquitous in Greek comedy, and our best studies of the subjecthave tended to focus on the ritual and cultural origins of animal figures and motifs, in par-ticular the costumed animal choruses of plays such as Wasps, Birds and Frogs (cf. G.M.Sifakis, Parabasis and Animal Choruses [1971]; K. Rothwell, Nature, Culture, and theOrigins of Greek Comedy: a Study of Animal Choruses [2007]). But C.-M. is essentiallyuninterested in questions of origins, offering instead a traditional philological approach tothe role of animal imagery in Aristophanes’ plays. The focus on images of animals inAristophanic comedy also reveals that C.-M.’s use of the term ‘bestiaire’ is not casual.C.-M.’s title is deliberately resonant with the medieval literary form, a popular genre con-cerned not with zoological accuracy but with allegorical interpretations of the natural world– a world imagined to be populated by both real and fantastic creatures. Aristophanes cre-ated a Bestiary to the extent that animals in his plays are ‘avant tout un emblème’ (p. 10),and because Aristophanic comedy makes reference both to the kinds of animals that realAthenians would have observed (e.g. dogs, frogs) as well as to legendary beasts, fantastichybrids and metamorphosed humans.The book is divided into two parts, one focussed on politics and the other on poetics.Chapter 1, ‘L’animal dans l’utopie pacifiste: vivre en paix, manger et faire l’amour’,explores the ‘double présence symbolique’ (p. 17) of animals in the so-called peaceplays (Acharnians, Peace, Lysistrata), where the consumption of animals expresses a long-ing for peace and animal comparisons are used to characterise the sordid appetites (bothculinary and sexual) of Athenians during wartime. C.-M. describes the ways in whichThe Classical Review vol. 63 no. 1 © The Classical Association 2013; all rights reservededible animals become invested with distinct symbolic functions within each of the anti-war utopias: ‘rêve d’opulence’ in Acharnians; ‘tableau d’une campagne idéale’ inPeace; and the ‘rétablissement du dialogue entre Grecs’ in Lysistrata. Words associatedwith the famous Boeotian eel (ἔγχελυς / ἐγχέλεια: e.g. Ach. 880–94, 962–3, 1043;Peace 1005–15; Lys. 36, 700–3) are prominent in the symbolic system C.-M. delineates;its import to Athens accompanies the return of peace in Aristophanes, who makes theeel ‘un emblème concret du panhellénisme’ (p. 36). The focus remains on consumptionin Chapter 2, ‘La cuisine politique’, with a shift to the animal as a marker of the perversionof the ‘régime alimentaire’ in Knights and Ecclesiazusae. Although Aristophanic comedyrepeatedly blames demagoguery for transforming Athenian democracy into a system gov-erned only by the material comfort of the masses, C.-M. shows that Aristophanes deploysanimal images in ways that condemn demagogues but also blame the Athenian people andtheir insatiable ‘citoyen-ventre’ (p. 82).Chapter 3, ‘L’animal politique’, offers a broad consideration of Aristophanes’ use ofanimal comparisons as a source of invective. Insults and name-calling are the bread andbutter of the Aristophanic bestiary, and the longest, most detailed sub-section of thebook, ‘Invective et satire politique’, is primarily devoted to the numerous and variousanimal-insults aimed at Cleon. Aristophanes’ bête noire is commonly associated with ani-mals known for rapacity and voracity, such as the gull (λάρος) and hawk (ἱέραξ), and ani-mals believed to be coarse and disgusting, such as the pig (cf. Cleon’s supposed ὑομουσία,Knights 986) and dung-beetle (κάνθαρος). But C.-M. notes that even animals with tra-ditionally positive connotations (the eagle or bee) can become ‘délavorisée’ when linkedto Cleon. C.-M. also notes a high concentration of insults involving the term κύων (fre-quently in compounds) in Knights, Wasps and Peace, connecting this to Cleon’s risky self-presentation as a ‘guard dog of the people’ during the years 424–421 B.C. In her discussionsof animals in Wasps and Birds (the focus of Chapter 4, ‘Le sauvage et la Cité dans lesOiseaux’), C.-M. develops the notion of ‘métaphores réalisées’, which involves the concre-tisation onstage of some aspect of an animal image: the dog trial in Wasps recasts dema-goguery’s dogginess as an actual dog; the chorus of old-men wasps materialises theproverbial irritability of old Athenian men in sting-equipped wasp costumes; and inBirds humans metamorphose into birds. In reflecting on the sources of Aristophanes’ bes-tiary, C.-M. describes a pattern according to which imagery inherited from the traditionalsymbolic bestiary of archaic poetry tends to be devalued or subverted in Aristophaniccomedy (e.g. wasps are imagined as warriors in Homer, not as parasitic drones), whereasmaterial inspired by popular imagery tends to be exaggerated or concretised in one way oranother (e.g. the proverbial comparison of cantankerous individuals to wasps).Part 2, ‘Bestiaire et poétique’, turns from politics to poetry, with chapters on Frogs andBirds. C.-M. is principally interested in the role played by animals in Aristophanes’engagement with other literary genres and in comic reflections on the figure of the poetand literary composition in general. In the ‘bestiaire de la critique littéraire’ (p. 302), ani-mal imagery plays a central role in staging the dialectic between ancient and new, high andlow, serious and comic, criticism and imitation. In particular, the use of humble animals inthe context of noble literary traditions (epic, lyric, tragic) creates ‘discordance de tons’ thatis a ‘principe même de la paratragedie chez Aristophane’ (p. 211 n. 3). Birds, even morethan Frogs, is identified as the most important site for Aristophanic use of literary-criticalanimals; this is because (in part) birds lend themselves so readily to comparisons with thegenres of epic, lyric and tragedy. C.-M. presents close readings of the song of the Hoopoeand the parodos of Birds (pp. 255–79), which lead to what C.-M. calls Aristophanes’ thirdvoice (neither pure fun nor earnest satire), a ‘lyrisme comique’ that effectively rejects thevery notion of a hierarchy of literary genres: ‘Aristophanes remet en question la hiérarchieTHE CLASSICAL REVIEW40des genres pour démontrer que la Comédie est un art majeur et lui donner ses lettres denoblesse’ (p. 303).Like zoo keeping, writing about animals may look like fun, but in practice it can be amessy business. So much has been written on the metaphorical function of animals in cul-tural and literary traditions, and much theoretical work besides has highlighted the slipperi-ness of the symbolic animal as an object of study. Thus it is in the end surprising to notehow neatly the ‘bestiaire d’Aristophane’ can be folded into our standard readings ofAristophanic comedy. C.-M. frames her monograph with the claim that the bestiary is a‘clef d’interpretation’ (p. 11 and p. 303), but because she generally ignores anthropologicaland literary theory – despite a momentary interest in Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque,p. 211 – the traditional philological method she employs tends in most cases to confirmrather than challenge the communis opinio. But if the volume is light on revelation, it isunquestionably successful in demonstrating just how thoroughly animal imagery iswoven into the fabric of Aristophanic comedy.Swarthmore College J EREMY B . LEFKOWITZjlefkow1@swarthmore.eduEMOT ION , GENRE AND GENDERMUN T E A N U ( D . L . ) (ed.) Emotion, Genre and Gender in ClassicalAntiquity. Pp. viii + 269, ills. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011.Cased, £50. ISBN: 978-0-7156-3895-8.doi:10.1017/S0009840X12002260This volume, which stems from a conference panel, undeniably contains some excellentscholarship. Nevertheless, it struggles to transcend the sum of its parts. This is partlydue to a misleading title: few chapters deal in depth with emotion and genre and gender.Second, while several pairs of chapters work well together, only one page of the introduc-tion discusses interconnections, and this reader spotted no cross-references in the chaptersthemselves. Another limitation (not clear from the title) is that the volume focusses mostlyon poetic genres, with relatively little on prose.In ‘Veiling Grief on the Tragic Stage’, D.L. Cairns examines veiling as a gesture of(relatively self-controlled) grief. He discusses several characters in Aeschylus and particu-larly Euripides, before arguing that veiling serves dramatically to separate the griever fromothers. However, a veil is also a metaphor, symbolising the grief hanging over the bereft.Finally, veiling can be a voluntary act within ritual mourning. The gesture is typical ofwomen (for whom head covering need not signify emotion), and so particularly note-worthy when performed by a man (signifying temporary strong emotion); this leads tosome more subtle points of gender difference. C. includes some instructive parallels toepic and imagery on pots, which lead him to conclude that there is ‘no hard and fast dis-junction between tragic and non-tragic veiling’ (p. 26).J. Wissman’s ‘Cowardice and Gender in the Iliad and Greek Tragedy’ opens withAristotle’s comments relating cowardice to inappropriate fear. This is implicitly assumedto apply throughout the chapter, emotion not being mentioned again. W. argues – reHomer, Classical Athens and the modern US army – that room is always left to interpretwhether actions are cowardly, affording space for rhetoric and imputation of motive. Iliadicmale characters are anxious to avoid such accusations, cowardice being associated withfemininity. In tragedy, this link continues: for men, cowardice (anandria) is unmanly;The Classical Review vol. 63 no. 1 © The Classical Association 2013; all rights reservedTHE CLASSICAL REVIEW 41

Jeremy B. Lefkowitz

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ARISTOPHANES' BESTIARY - C. Corbel-Morana Le Bestiaire d'Aristophane. (Ètudes Anciennes, Série Grecque 144.) Pp. 350, ills. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012. Paper, €45. ISBN: 978-2-251-32680-1.

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Aristophanes\u27 Bestiary

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