Terence And The Language Of Roman Comedy

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the language of Roman comedy in general and that of Terence in particular. The study explores Terence's use of language to differentiate his characters and his language in relation to the language of the comic fragments of the palliata, the togata and the atellana. Linguistic categories in the Terentian corpus explored include colloquialisms, archaisms, hellenisms and idiolectal features. Terence is shown to give his old men an old-fashioned and verbose tone, while low characters are represented as using colloquial diction. An examination of Eunuchus' language shows it to be closer to the Plautine linguistic tradition. The book also provides a thorough linguistic/stylistic commentary on all the fragments of the palliata, the togata and the atellana. It shows that Terence, except in the case of his Eunuchus, consciously distances himself from the linguistic/stylistic tradition of Plautus followed by all other comic poets.

This book examines Terence's use of language and provides the first linguistic and stylistic commentary on the extant fragments of the fabula palliata, togata and atellana. Terence, except in the case of his Eunuchus, is shown to distance himself in style and language from the practice of other comic authors.

For many years the domain of specialists in early Latin, in complex metres, and in the reconstruction of texts, Roman comedy is now established in the mainstream of Classical literary criticism. Where most books stress the original performance as the primary location for the encountering of the plays, this book finds the locus of meaning and appreciation in the activity of a reader, albeit one whose manner of reading necessarily involves the imaginative reconstruction of performance. The texts are treated, and celebrated, as literary devices, with programmatic beginnings, middles, ends, and intertexts. All the extant plays of Plautus and Terence have at least a bit part in this book, which seeks to expose the authors' fabulous artificiality and artifice, while playing along with their differing but interrelated poses of generic humility.

Provides a comprehensive critical engagement with Roman comedy and its reception presented by leading international scholars in accessible and up-to-date chapters.

This anthology contains English translations of five plays by two of the best practitioners of Roman comedy, Plautus and Terence. The plays, Menaechmi, Rudens, Truculentus, Adelphoe, and Eunuchus, provide an introduction to the world of Roman comedy. As with all Focus translations, the emphasis is on a handsomely produced, inexpensive, readable edition that is close to the original, with an extensive introduction, notes and appendices.

This book provides the most complete and definitive study of Roman comedy. Originally published in 1952. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence documents the ongoing popularity of Roman comedies, and shows that they continued to be performed in the late Republic and early Imperial periods of Rome. Playwrights Plautus and Terence impressed audiences with stock characters as the young-man-in-love, the trickster slave, the greedy pimp, the prostitute, and many others. A wide range of spectators visited Roman theaters, including even the most privileged members of Roman society: orators like Cicero, satirists like Horace and Juvenal, and love poets like Catullus and Ovid. They all put comedy’s varied characters to new and creative uses in their own works, as they tried to make sense of their own lives and those of the people around them by suggesting comparisons to the standard personality types of Roman comedy. Scholars have commonly believed that the plays fell out of favor with theatrical audiences by the end of the first century BCE, but The Life of Comedy demonstrates that performances of these comedies continued at least until the turn of the second century CE. Mathias Hanses traces the plays’ reception in Latin literature from the late first century BCE to the early second century CE, and shines a bright light on the relationships between comic texts and the works of contemporary and later Latin writers.

"Publius Terentius Afer--our Terence--was a slave from North Africa, brought as a boy from Carthage and sold to a wealthy Roman named Marcus Terentius Lucanus. Recognizing the boy's natural charm and genius, Marcus Terentius had Terence educated along with his own children and eventually set the gifted young man free. Terence took to his education in Latin and Greek literature and was soon writing plays of his own--Roman comedies in Latin poetry, based on Greek models. The plays were performed for Romans from every walk of life, who crowded the improvised theaters on festival days. Before his death by shipwreck at age thirty-six--on a voyage to Greece in search of manuscripts by Menander--he had become one of Rome's most popular comedic playwrights.".

Terence's Eunuchus (The Eunuch) was his most successful play in his lifetime but has been surprisingly neglected by modern commentators. In this first ever full-scale commentary in English, Professor Barsby provides a thorough examination of the play in terms of its literary and dramatic qualities, its staging, and its relationship to the two plays of Menander's on which it is based. The commentary includes scene-by-scene discussions which bring out the development of character and plot, and the notes offer a close study of Terence's language in comparison with that of his predecessor Plautus. A full introduction puts Terence in his historical and literary context, and there are two appendices, one on metre and the other giving text and translation of the remains of Menander's Eunouchos and Kolax.

Launching a much-needed new series discussing each comedy that survives from the ancient world, this volume is a vital companion to Terence's earliest comedy, Andria, highlighting its context, themes, staging and legacy. Ideal for students it assumes no knowledge of Latin, but is helpful also for scholars wanting a quick introduction. This will be the first port of call for anyone studying or researching the play. Though Andria launched Terence's career as a dramatist at Rome, it has attracted comparatively little attention from modern critics. It is nevertheless a play of great interest, not least for the sensitivity with which it portrays family relationships and for its influence on later dramatists. It also presents students of Roman comedy with all the features that came to characterize Terence's particular version of traditional comedy, and it raises all the interpretive questions that have dogged the study of Terence for generations. This volume will use a close reading of the play to explore the central issues in understanding Terence's style of play-making and its legacy.