Story Idea

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Story Idea

• Boy Meets Girl
• Fall in Love
• Marry

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Menander, Old Cantankerous

• The Mirror of Comedy

Menander
Theater at Epidaurus
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Menanders Old Cantankerous

• Period, Playwright, Play

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Period Hellenistic Age (326-31 BCE)

• Rise of Macedonia map
• Decline of democracy
• Emergence of philosophy
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
• Theophrastus (ca. 370-288/5 BCE)
• Stoics, Epicureans, etc. (200s on)

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Alexanders Empire
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Playwright Menander (342/1-293/89)

• Well-to-do
• student of Theophrastus
• pro-Macedonian
• 105 plays
• 8 victories

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? ???a?d?e ?a? ß?e, p?te??? ??? ?µ?? p?te???
?µ?µ?sat? O Menander and Life Which of you has
imitated the other?(Aristophanes of Byzantium)
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Play Setting, Story

• Setting
• 3 houses diagram
• Phyle (rural Attica - map)
• Story
• a boy, a girl, a grouch the families

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Stage Set
skene (stage building)
Shrine ofPan and the Nymphs
Gorgiashouse
Knemons house
doors
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Setting Phyle, Athenian countryside
Extent of MacedonianConquests
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The Families

• Knemons Household
• Knemon
• "Girl"
• Simiche
• Gorgias Household
• Gorgias
• Myrrhine
• Daos

• Kallipides Household
• Kallipides
• Mother of Sostratos
• Sostratos
• Getas, slave of Kallipides
• Other
• Chaireas
• Pyrrhias
• Sikon
• Pan

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Characters Your Thoughts

• Knemon
• Sostratos
• Gorgias
• Slaves and low characters

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Old Cantankerous asNew Comedy like / unlike
Aristophanes?
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Old versus New Comedy

• Old (486-380s)
• political
• vulgarity-obscenity-sexual
• look at all the wackiness
• parody/abuse of real persons
• fantasy

• New (330s-200s )
• a-political
• fairly tame
• reliant on plot
• no personal abuse
• realism

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Euripidean Influences

• double recognition-reversal
• Pentheus
• Agave
• poetic justice
• situational, suspenseful

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Slave tells lovers the bad news
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Old Woman(figurine, ca. 300 BCE)
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Menander The Possessed Girl
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Plangon (Philainis daughter)
Philainis (elderly madam)
Pythias(prostitute, friend)
Menander Women at Breakfast
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New Comedy - Formula

• Dilemma
• love thwarted
• extremes unmediated
• social-familial ties weakened
• Solution
• often by low character
• Celebration
• komos

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Themes and Message

• The Golden Mean

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Cantankerous Themes, Message

• basing marriage on love and material
  considerations
• sociality
• persevere ands work hard!!
• let loose, enjoy, dont work so hard

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meden aganNothing to Excess
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Course

• Closing Thoughts

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Ariadne
Dionysus
Komos
Tragoidia
Wine-Mixing Bowl(krater), ca. 430 BCE