Researched Paper - Books on Reserve

Since many people expressed interest in closely related topics, I have asked Cudahy Library to place on reserve several books that offer interesting, up-to-date treatments of pertinent information. This is not to say that the chapters in these books have an exclusive lock on Truth - your own researches may well show that these views can be improved on - but they should offer a good place to start, with guidance into other relevant bibliography. Nor does this reserve list make any pretense to including everything that could be relevant to your work: keep investigating till you find the background you need to conduct your own analyses with appropriate insight.

I list the reserve books by the topics to which they seem to be most useful, but works that focus in one area may also throw light on other areas too - investigate broadly, then tighten your focus to a topic that will work in a 7-9 page essay.

Again, these resources are on reserve to be conveniently available to you, but not by any means to limit your research!! See further this guide to Beginning Research on Topics in Classical Studies.

Of Value for Most Topics

• Eric Csapo and William J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (1995): PA 3024 .C75 1995
  • primary source material in translation on all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman drama and its production, with introductions to the various topics
• Ruth Scodel, ed., Theater and Society in the Classical World (1993): PA 3024 .T47 1993
  • articles on various aspects of politics, religion, and society as they relate to Athenian tragedy, Old Comedy, and New Comedy in Greece and Rome

Women and Sexuality

• Elaine Fantham et al., Women in the Classical World: Image and Text (1994): HQ 1127 .W652 1994
  • general overview, with extensive selection of translated primary sources and artworks
• Helene Foley, "The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama," in Foley, ed., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (1981): HQ 1134 .R4 1981
  • insightful overview, covering tragedy as well as comedy
• Jeffrey Henderson, tr. and comm., Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women (1996): PA 3877 .A2 1996
  • Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae (which we have not read, since it focuses on the issue of how Euripides' tragedies treat women and thus gets a bit far afield for us in one short semester), and Ecclesiazusae (which we know as Women in Power), translated with introductions and extensive notes
• Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, 2^nd edn. (1991): PA3166 .H4 1991
  • terminology and concepts
• Vincent J. Rosivach, When a Young Man Falls in Love: the Sexual Exploitation of Women in New Comedy (1998): PA 3188 .R67 1998
  • wide-ranging social-historical considerations relating to the main focus of most plots of New Comedy

Athenian Society

• Alan L. Boegehold and Adele C. Scafuro, eds., Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (1994): JC 75 .C5 A85 1994
  • articles on what it meant to be a citizen of Athens, and how one qualified: much is relevant to both Aristophanes and New Comedy, in addition to David Konstan's article specifically on premarital sex in plays of Menander
• David Konstan, Greek Comedy and Ideology (1995): PA 3166 .K66 1995
  • various aspects of Old and New Comedy

Religion

• Xavier Riu, Dionysism and Comedy (1999): PA3166 .R58 1999
  • aspects of a cult-consciousness of Dionysus, in comedy
• John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (1990): PA3136 .N68 1990
  • various aspects of religion and an Athenian civic religious consciousness, in tragedy and comedy

Theatrical Production

• Clifford Ashby, Classical Greek Theatre: New Views of an Old Subject (1999): PA 3201 .A79 1999
  • evidence and interpretation of ancient Greek theatres and how they worked
• Richard Beacham, The Roman Theatre and its Audience
  • perspectives of a theatrical practitioner on performance of plays in the Roman world
• Timothy J. Moore, The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience (1998): PA 6585 .M66 1998
  • studies of how Plautus's scripts imply his characters relate(d) to their audiences
• Niall W. Slater, Plautus in Performance: the Theatre of the Mind (1985): PA6585 .S55 1985
  • dynamics of performance, as suggested by Plautus's scripts

New Comedy between Greece and Rome

• William S. Anderson, Barbarian Play: Plautus' Roman Comedy (1993): PA 6585 .A544 1993
  • Plautus's New Comedy, including its consciousness of playing off Greek and Roman elements
• Dwora Gilula, "Greek Drama at Rome: Some Aspects of Cultural Transposition," in Hanna Scolnicov and Peter Holland, eds., The Play Out of Context: Transferring Plays from Culture to Culture (1989): PN1621 .P58 1989
  • inter-cultural dynamics of adapting New Comedy from Greek originals for performance at Rome
• James Halporn, "Roman Comedy and Greek Models," in Scodel (1993).
  • the relationship between models and their adaptations

Food

• Emily Gowers, The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature (1993): PA6029 .F66 G69 1993
  • literary uses of food, including Roman comedy and satire

Literary Studies covering Numerous Aspects of Comedy and Satire

• A. M. Bowie, Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual, and Comedy (1993): PA 3879 .B84 1993
• Sander M. Goldberg, The Making of Menander's Comedy (1980): PA4247 .G58 1980
• Kenneth J. Reckford, Aristophanes' Old-and-New Comedy (1987): PA 3879 .R4 1987

This file last updated 28 February 2001 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu.
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/