Edith Hall

Peter Swallow

This volume sets out to discuss a crucial question for ancient comedy – what makes Aristophanes funny? Too often Aristophanes' humour is taken for granted as merely a tool for the delivery of political and social commentary. But Greek Old Comedy was above all else designed to amuse people, to win the dramatic competition by making the audience laugh the hardest. Any discussion of Aristophanes therefore needs to take into account the ways in which his humour actually works. This question is addressed in two ways. The first half of the volume offers an in-depth discussion of humour theory – a field heretofore largely overlooked by classicists and Aristophanists – examining various theoretical models within the specific context of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays. In the second half, contributors explore Aristophanic humour more practically, examining how specific linguistic techniques and performative choices affect the reception of humour, and exploring the range of subjects Aristophanes tackles as vectors for his comedy. A focus on performance shapes the narrative, since humour lives or dies on the stage – it is never wholly comprehensible on the page alone.

Theory and Practice

Aristophanic Humour

In this lively and wide-ranging study, Peter Swallow explores the reception of Aristophanes in Britain throughout the long-nineteenth century, setting it in the broader context of Victorian Classicism and, more specifically, the period's reception of Greek tragedy. Swallow shows the surprising extent to which Aristophanes was repurposed across an array of mediums in Victorian Britain, and demonstrates that Aristophanic reception in the period was always a process of speaking to contemporary issues--making Old Comedy new. The book examines two strands of Aristophanic reception: the political and the aesthetic. From the start of the long-nineteenth century, the British reception of Aristophanes tied into contemporary political debate, as historians, translators and commentators, and even the burlesque writer J.R. Planché activated Aristophanes in support of their own political positions. But each writer's conceptualisation of Aristophanes was as different as their political outlooks. While many writers who appropriated Aristophanes for their cause were Tories, a notable outlier is Percy Shelley, whose Aristophanic drama Swellfoot the Tyrant activated Old Comedy to argue for democratic republicanism--what we would now call a left-wing political revolution. The second strand of Aristophanic reception, which developed from around the middle of the nineteenth century, actively depoliticised Old Comedy and instead received it through an aesthetic lens. The aesthetics of Aristophanes--with an emphasis on the beautiful and the archaeological--also lay behind school and university productions of Old Comedy during this period. These strands of nineteenth-century Aristophanic reception find synthesis towards the book's conclusion. Edwardian women's receptions of Aristophanes show how activists used his plays to argue for equal educational opportunities and the right to vote. In the final chapter, Gilbert Murray and George Bernard Shaw's receptions reveal both the political and artistic potential of Aristophanes.

Old Comedy in the Nineteenth Century

Aristophanes in Britain

Barrie Chanter

This new edition of an informative and accessible book guides building surveyors and facilities managers through the key aspects of property maintenance and continues to be of value to both students and practitioners. With the increasing cost of new-build, effective maintenance of existing building stock is becoming ever more important and building maintenance work now represents nearly half of total construction output in the UK. Building Maintenance Management provides a comprehensive profile of the many aspects of property maintenance. This second edition has been updated throughout, with sections on outsourcing; maintenance planning; benchmarking and KPIs; and current trends in procurement routes (including partnering and the growth of PFI) integrated into the text. There is also a new chapter on the changing context within which maintenance is carried out, largely concerned with its relationship to facilities management. More coverage is given of maintenance organisations and there are major updates to relevant aspects of health and safety and to contract forms.

Peter Swallow

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