Study Guide for Exam II: New Comedy at Athens and Rome

Format

• cut-and-dried identifications: basic factual information (small credit per item, and a small component of the exam)
• passages from the plays we’ve read: identify context, and discuss briefly what the passage shows about New Comedy (each a medium-small quantum of credit, but adding up to a major component of the exam)
• essay: discuss a thematic question, drawing for support of your contentions on specific, concrete evidence from several plays (the largest single item of credit; a major component of the exam)

Things to study

• the playwrights of each play we’ve read
• major characters in each play we’ve read
• stock roles in New Comedy: Young Lover, Severe Father, Indulgent Father, Mother, Clever Slave, Parasite, Cook, Braggart Soldier, Innocent Young Girl, Old Servant Woman, Pimp, Prostitute, Cynical Retired Prostitute, etc.
• native Italian farce
• Southern Italian (Greek colonial) phlyax comedy
• ludi and other occasions for performance of comedy at Rome
• elements of how plays were brought to performance at Rome: who participated, on what basis, with what kinds of structures, facilities for the audience, costume and props, etc.

Strategy: think of specific passages that illustrate important points, so you can back up your arguments with concrete evidence on the test. Be sure you explain clearly how the passage helps demonstrate your point.

• qualities and predilections of the stock roles
• how individual characters in the plays we’ve read vary the expectations of stock roles
• how the plot is introduced in different plays, and how different techniques of conveying the plot change the way the audience perceives the play
• how the prologue relates to the main action of the play
• eavesdropping and the "aside": communication between characters and the audience
• how New Comedy reflects and/or comments on Athenian or Roman society and life
• the role of the head of the household
• tensions between fathers and sons
• how to bring up a son: nurture and character
• the role(s) of women in the family
• the role(s) of slaves in the family
• licit and illicit sexual unions, and the ethics that regulate them (up to a point)
• marriages, as the goal of action and as an ongoing concern
• myth and religion in New Comedy
• social integration
• social responsibility of the individual in New Comedy: broader implications of personal acts
• social inversion as a source of comedy
• joy in trickery as a source of comedy
• slapstick as a source of comedy
• absence of knowledge as a source of comedy: deception and ignorance
• food, sex, wine and drunkenness in New Comedy

This file last updated 27 March 2001 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu.
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/