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Ancient Sources (Written Evidence): History and Comedy

Module description

For laughter comedy has to tap into interests, passions and concerns of the age. Hence the comic genre, as commentary and critique, is ideal for understanding social norms, political wranglings, perceptions of self and other, ambitions and fears. It is also historically complex, as it draws on tropes and antecedents while often presenting a world in extremes and upside-down, where non-heroic and sometimes even marginalised people (enslaved people, prostitutes, youth, outsiders, women…) become key drivers of action. In this module, you will be asking how comedy can be used to tell ancient history from below and to write alternative histories, thus challenging assumptions about past societies and, in the process, our own.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aims of the module are:

• To engage in in-depth thinking about the way that comedy can be used to understand ancient society.
• To illustrate the opportunities and limitations of textual evidence for understanding the ancient world.
• To gain skills in critical analytical reading of complex texts.
• To ask new and different questions in light of difficult and fragmentary evidence, for a particular period in time, and contexts – especially where few voices remain.
• To use the comic genre to get at the underside of history.
• To discuss context of comic performance and its development in the ancient world.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Describe and critically evaluate the material within ancient comic writings for the understanding of history
• 2. Demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the problems of using comedy for history and articulate ways of asking new questions to allow for it to be used in history writing

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Use, analyse and evaluate in detail ancient texts as a major source for understanding the ancient world
• 4. Demonstrate an enhanced understanding of the opportunites and limitations of textual evidence for understanding the ancient world

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Demonstrate independent study skills in guided research and the presentation of findings
• 6. Develop critical and analytical skills in confronting diverse forms of text, evidence and performance and be able to organise material coherently for presentation with a strong overall argument

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics that will be considered through the comic genre, and especially the surviving plays, whether focused on Roman or Greek contexts (some years may focus on one of the regions):

• Introduction to comedy and key case studies from Greek Old Comedy, Greek New Comedy, and/or Roman Comedy.
• Greek and Oscan comedy in Ancient Italy and Rome.
• Plautine elements in Plautus: is it just plagiarism?
• The trickster slave, and slave theater.
• Unruly youth and unruly parents.
• The wife, the daughter and the courtesan.
• Between xenophobia and hospitality.
• Lost languages in comedy.
• Journeys and Empires.
• Comedy and the law.
• Redrawing boundaries in a world without maps.
• Trade and economy.
• War and peace.
• City and country.
• Rulers and subjects.
• Politics in (and of) comedy.
• Between laughter and trauma.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• A. Augoustakis and A. Traill (eds.), A Companion to Terence (Malden/Oxford, 2013).
• E. Csapo and W. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor, 1995)
• M. Dinter (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Comedy (Cambridge, 2019).
• W. Fitzgerald, Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 2000).
• M. Fontaine and A. Scafuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Greek and Roman Comedy (Oxford, 2014).
• E. Fraenkel, Plautine elements in Plautus:(Plautinisches im Plautus). (Oxford, 2007).
• G.F. Franko and D. Dutsch (eds.), A Companion to Plautus (Malden/Oxford, 2020).
• S. Halliwell, Greek Laughter (Cambridge, 2008).
• E. Isayev, ‘Plautus on mobility of the Everyday’ in Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy (Cambridge, 2017).
• M. Leigh, Comedy and the Rise of Rome (Oxford, 2004).
• N.J. Lowe, Comedy (Cambridge, 2007).
• G. Manuwald, Roman Drama (London, 2010)
• C.W. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (Cambridge, 2006).
• K. McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy (Princeton 2000).
• D. Olson (ed.), Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy (Oxford, 2007).
• M. Revermann (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (Cambridge, 2015).
• A. Richlin, Slave theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and popular comedy. (Cambridge, 2017)
• J. Rusten (ed.), The Birth of Comedy (Baltimore, 2011).
• E. Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (2nd edition, Oxford, 1987).
• E. Segal (ed.), Oxford Readings in Menander, Plautus, and Terence (Oxford, 2001).
• O. Taplin, Pots and Plays (Los Angeles, 2007)
• E. Weitz, The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy (Cambridge, 2009).
• T. P. Wiseman, The Roman Audience, (Oxford, 2015).
• M.E. Wright, The Comedian as Critic: Greek Old Comedy and Poetics (London, 2012).
• M.E. Wright, "The scripted audience in Roman comedy" Trends in Classics, 16.1, 2024: 144-169.
• F. Zeitlin, Playing the Other (Chicago, 1995).

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• The Loeb Classical Library editions (available in hard copy or as e-books via the Library catalogue)

Key words search

Ancient Rome; Ancient Greece; Comedy; Drama; History; Performance; Plays