Saturio's Inheritance: The Greek Ancestry of the Roman Comic ParasiteP. Lang, 2002 - 192 pagine The parasite, the flamboyant and ever-hungry character of the Roman stage, had a complicated family tree reaching back to the beggar of the Homeric poems and to the fashionable circles of philosophizing sophists satirized by poets of Old Comedy at Athens. That caricature evolved into the stereotype figure whose jokes, prolixity, and peculiar obsessions continued to mark his Roman descendant many generations later. Along the way the stage figure of the parasite served as a funny and distorting mirror in which to reflect the preoccupations of the masculine society at whose table the parasite constantly endeavored to dine. The parasite was willing to make jokes and to suffer any degree of degradation and ridicule, provided that he got fed: he thus embodied that marginal member of society who lived always on sufferance. From Homer to Plautus the parasite defined the boundary of inclusion or exclusion in society by his precarious position on its outermost edge. |
Sommario
Ragged Opportunism in Early Greek Poetry and Society | 7 |
Flatterers and New Comedy | 93 |
Notes | 125 |
Copyright | |
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Parole e frasi comuni
Acestor alazon alazoneia Alcibiades Alexis Andocides anecdote Antiphanes Antisthenes Aristophanes Arnott Asius Athenaeus Athenian audience beggar Callias caricature Chaereas Chaerephon character characterized chorus Cleon Cleonymus clever cloak Clouds comic poet comic stage Conon conspicuous contemporary context Cynic defined demos described Dicaeopolis dinner Diogenes Laertius Dionysius Diphilus entertainment Epicharmus Eupolis Euripides feast flatterer's fragment Gnatho Greek guests hanger-on historical individuals Homeric host household hungry intellectual Irus Ischomachus joke knisokolax kolakeia kolakes kolax kompsos lekythos Medon Menander Menander's Middle Comedy Nesselrath nickname Odysseus oil-flask Old Comedy opportunist palliata Paphlagon parasite parasite's perhaps person Pheidippides Phemius Philippus philosophers Philoxenus phrontisterion Plato Plautus play playwrights professional Protagoras rags relationship ridicule role Saturio's sausageseller slave social society Socrates sophists Sostratus speech stage flatterer stereotype Strepsiades suggested suitors symposium target Telephus Theorus Timocles tongue uninvited Wasps word Xenophon young γὰρ δὲ ἐν καὶ μὲν οὐ τὸ τοῖς τὸν τῶν