Research seminars

Popular Comedy in Antiquity

This seminar series investigates the extent, limits and utility of considering drama to be ‘popular’, particularly from the angles of modes of performance and reception of comedy. How far did performance in front of a mass audience shape the form and language of Greek and/or Roman comedy? How genuinely ‘popular’ was comedy in either context? To what extent and in what ways did ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ interact in the original and subsequent contexts of reception? Is ‘popular comedy’ a useful term or is it subsuming other more challenging concepts (such as, for example, class)? And to what extent can parallel themes in the production and reception of popular comedy be seen across cultures?

This seminar series considers Ancient Greece and Rome, but is intended as the starting point of a broader investigation to consider popular comedy in other periods and modes, with a one-day workshop in the summer of 2011 and a large-scale conference in June 2012.

Download the Popular Comedy in Antiquity poster.

Schedule

5 October 2010. Dr Nick Lowe (Royal Holloway University of London)

Who killed Menander?

19 October 2010: Dr Gesine Manuwald (University College London)

How ‘popular’ was comedy in Rome?

2 November 2010: Mr Peter Brown (Trinity College, Oxford)

The audience of Plautus and Terence

16 November 2010: Dr Matthew Wright (University of Exeter)

Middlebrow versus highbrow comedy: Aristophanes and the 422 Lenaea

7 December 2010: Dr Peter Kruschwitz (University of Reading)

Terence and the people: an analysis of discourse

All seminars take place at 5pm at 65 Oakfield Avenue (off University Avenue) in the Main Campus at Gilmorehill. All are welcome.

For further details please contact either Ian Ruffell (ian.ruffell@glasgow.ac.uk) or Costas Panayotakis (costas.panayotakis@glasgow.ac.uk; tel. no. +141 330 4383).