Aristophanes

Jeffrey Henderson

A contemporary translation of one of Aristophanes' comedies with scholarly notes and introduction.

Aristophanes' The Birds

In this English translation of Aristophanes' popular comedy the god Dionysus, disappointed in current Athenian playwrights, seeks to bring the dramatist Euripides back from Hades. Includes helpful notes and an introductory essay on Aristophanes, the history of the play and its production, and a bibliography.

Frogs

English translation of Aristophanes' hilarious indictment against war, with an introductory essay and helpful notes. Essay includes biographical information on Aristophanes, the history of the play and its production, a bibliography and suggestions for further reading.

Aristophanes' Acharnians

English translation of Aristophanes' most popular comedy, with a lively, imaginative plot, memorable heroine, and appeal for peace and tolerance between nations and between the sexes. Includes helpful notes and an introductory essay on Aristophanes, the history of the play and its production, a bibliography and suggestions for further reading.

Aristóphanês' Lysístrata

This book brings together benchmark essays in the field of global political economy, covering the key political-economic issues of East Asian development: the relation between the state and markets; the changing nature of economic governance and its relation to inequality; and the rise of China and its international consequences.

On the Political Economy of Dynamism, Governance and Crisis

East Asian Transformation

The pervasive and unrestrained use of obscenity has long been acknowledged as a major feature of fifth-century Attic Comedy; no other Western art form relies so heavily on the sexual and scatological dimensions of language. This acclaimed book, now in a new edition, offers both a comprehensive discussion of the dynamics of Greek obscenity and a detailed commentary on the terminology itself. After contrasting the peculiar characteristics of the Greek notion of obscenity to modern-day ideas, Henderson discusses obscenity's role in the development of Attic Comedy, its historical origins, varieties, and dramatic function. His analysis of obscene terminology sheds new light on Greek culture, and his discussion of Greek homosexuality offers a refreshing corrective to the idealized Platonic view. He also looks in detail at the part obscenity plays in each of Aristophanes' eleven surviving plays. The latter part of the book identifies all the obscene terminology found in the extant examples of Attic Comedy, both complete plays and fragments. Although these terminological entries are arranged in numbered paragraphs resembling a glossary, they can also be read as independent essays on the various aspects of comic obscenity. Terms are explained as they occur in each individual context and in relation to typologically similar terminology. With newly corrected and updated philological material, this second edition of Maculate Muse will serve as an invaluable reference work for the study of Greek drama.

Obscene Language in Attic Comedy

The Maculate Muse

Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria. III

William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature Jeffrey Henderson

These three plays by the great comic playwright Aristophanes (c. 446-386 BCE), the well-known Lysistrata, and the less familiar Women at the Thesmophoria and Assemblywomen, are the earliest surviving portrayals of contemporary women in the European literary tradition. These plays provide a unique glimpse of women not only in their familiar domestic roles but also in relation to household and city, religion and government, war and peace, theater and festival, and, of course, to men. This freshly revised edition presents, for the first time in a single volume, all three plays in faithful modern translations that preserve intact Aristophanes’ blunt and often obscene language, sparkling satire, political provocation, and beguiling fantasy. Alongside the translations are ample introductions and notes covering the politically engaged genre of Aristophanic comedy in general and issues of sex and gender in particular, which have been fully updated since the first edition in light of recent scholarship. An appendix contains fragments of lost plays of Aristophanes that also featured women, and an up-to-date bibliography provides guidance for further exploration. In addition to their timeless humor and biting satire, the plays are unique and invaluable documents in the history of western sexuality and gender, and they offer strikingly prescient speculations about the social and political future of the female sex.

Jeffrey Henderson

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