The Language of Parody

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Excerpt from The Language of Parody: A Study in the Diction of Aristophanes Although the subject of "parody in the Greek Comic poets" has claimed the attention of many scholars from time to time, forming a theme for dissertations and more pretentious works, there has been no systematic treatment of the language of parody aiming to give a full collection of those words by which the writers of the old comedy secured their parodic effects. It is this work which I have tried to do for Aristophanes. The following pages contain what professes to be, however insufficient it may be found, a complete list of those words by the use of which Aristophanes departs from the usage of the ordinary Athenian life of his day, and rises to the loftier tone of tragedy or other kinds of poetry. There will be found, moreover, many words not belonging to this higher sphere which are yet used in parody. Such are those dialectical words with which Aristophanes knows so well how to depict the manners of his provincial fellow-countrymen from Boiotia, Megara and Lakedaimon. In this part I have not thought it worth while to collect mere dialectical variants of words which were current in Attic, but have included only such as are not at home in any shape on Attic soil. The places where the higher tone is consciously sought coincide, in large measure, with those which have been shown by Scholiasts and modern scholars to be parody or paratragedy, but not unfrequently poetic words spring up from surroundings which seem quite sober and matter-of-fact, and a closer study is often necessary to enable one to see why they are used. Thus the formal limits of known parody are too narrow, and many words in the subsequent pages, though not found in parodic lines, have, nevertheless, a poetic tinge. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.