Transtextual Technique in Aristophanic Comedy

• Applicant: Dr. Claudia Michel
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 288600178

Aristophanic comedy reflects in a multidimensional way the classical epoch of Athens in the 5th century BCE and its cultural life. Aristophanes comments explicitly on the quality and the effects of poetry; he utilizes a wide range of literary references: to epic poetry, fable, lyric poetry, and especially to tragedy, but also to comedy itself and to genres today classified as scientific, such as philosophy and historiography. Equally varied are the forms of the references, which can be citations, allusions, but also scenic parallels, as well as references to the person of a poet or to his work. Thus far these literary references have only been examined in mostly genre-based segments, an inadequate method to take account of the complex reference technique in the text. The research project will thus analyze this network of diverse literary references, which constitutes a kind of poetical knowledge store, across the genres for the whole preserved work, including the fragments.Earlier research often perceived the literary references in Aristophanes as a parody of serious poetry. This generalized terminology seems problematic since it suggests a comic effect, which is by no means the intention of all references. The theory of transtextuality by G. Genette that limits intertextuality, introduced by J. Kristeva in order to define a text as a mosaic of citations, to quotation-like references and designates by hypertextuality larger reference fields, provides an appropriate instrument to record a plurality of different literary references without undertaking a hierarchization of interpretation. Moreover, Genette distinguishes the hermeneutic gap between ancient and modern conception of parody.The aim of the project is to supply, as far as possible by means of the tradition, a complete systematization of literary references and reference techniques in Aristophanic comedy, founded on the most recent editions of texts and fragments. The publication of the results is planned as a monograph. The references will be regarded within the context of each play or within the fragment corpus, respectively. This method should allow clear identification of the reference technique, which crucially concerns the textual environment of the references; moreover, thus referential overlays do not have to be treated repeatedly. Finally, interpretative aspects of the references can be most plausibly investigated within the dramatic context.The research project will try to point out how Aristophanes experiments with different dimensions of literary references, transforming them into a constitutive element of his own language. In terms of reader-response criticism, investigation of the decodability of this broad spectrum of references by a diversely competent audience should contribute to the comprehension of the comic impact and the political implication of Aristophanic comedy.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants