Space in Aristophanes: Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps

254 Pages·2013·1.38 MB·English

by  Nina Papathanasopoulou Myers

Space in Aristophanes:
Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds
in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps

Nina Papathanasopoulou

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2013
©2013
Nina Papathanasopoulou
All rights reserved
ABSTRACT
Space in Aristophanes: Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds
in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps

Nina Papathanasopoulou
This dissertation explores the treatment of the scenic and diegetic space in Aristophanes’
Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps, and the comedies’ attitude towards a variety of domestic and
civic spaces, taking into consideration the cultural context in which the plays were composed. I
argue that by using visual creativity and the available staging resources, Aristophanes calls
attention to the consequences of the Peloponnesian war on the Athenians’ civic and domestic
life. Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps all literalize in an imaginative way the impact of the
dysfunction of the polis – the assembly, the agora, the boule, the lawcourts – on the oikos and the
householder. The plays not only explore what happens to the oikos itself, but also the
implications for a polis in which the oikos loses its place of prominence.
Acharnians displays an example of the polis’ dysfunction in an assembly meeting at the
Pnyx, and traces an individual’s frustration with this polis and his journey back to his oikos. We
witness the reactions of Dikaiopolis and the Acharnians, both of whom have been forced out of
their oikoi, have had their properties ravaged, and experience their estrangement with nostalgia
or anger. I argue that through a private peace treaty Dikaiopolis is able to return to his oikos, and
then expand his domestic space in order to be reintegrated into a functional community. Knights
presents an invaded oikos both as allegory for the dysfunction of the polis, and as a way of
connecting Athens’ foreign policy decisions to the concerns of the individual Athenian
householder. The play’s allegorical significance, present also in the double persona of Demos
who represents both a household master and the people of Athens, conveys the impression that
events taking place in the political realm have an impact also on the domestic lives of Athenian
citizens. Wasps calls attention to the mismanagement of civic institutions by presenting the
contrasting perspectives of a father and a son on particular domestic and civic spaces. Here I
argue that the play presents the space of the oikos as a microcosm for the polis of Athens within
which social and political divisions can be observed. The play focuses on the lawcourts’
accumulation of power within the astu as the single place in which all cases were tried during the
war. By making the protagonist Philocleon defy his own oikos, Aristophanes turns his focus onto
new problems in the management of individual households, and explores what happens when the
oikos or the polis becomes a citizen’s primary locus of allegiance. All three plays present their
central conflict in terms of a struggle to return to, enter, or escape from the oikos: spatial
restrictions on the citizens imposed by war policy (Acharnians); the threat of invasion of the
oikos by elements foreign to it (Knights); and the threat to the integrity of the oikos imposed by
the dysfunctional jury system (Wasps).
The first chapter looks at the importance of the visual component of Greek drama and
provides a survey of previous works on this topic. I discuss the stage resources Aristophanes
would be using; I explain my choice of examining together Acharnians, Knights and Wasps; and
I give an overview of the plays’ historical context. Chapters two, three, and four are dedicated
respectively to each of the three plays, and examine the space and staging of each play
sequentially. In a brief conclusion I suggest that Aristophanes might be considered among the
first authors to display interest in domestic economy, by turning the Athenians’ focus to the
welfare of the oikos and its importance for the prosperity of the polis.
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii

Chapter 1 – Introduction: Space and Staging in Greek Drama 1

Chapter 2 – The Dynamics of Space in the Acharnians 35

Chapter 3 – The Individual’s and the People’s Residence: 116
Demos’ Oikos in Knights

Chapter 4 – Unity of Space and the Representation of the Oikos 172
in Wasps

Conclusion 238

Bibliography 243

i
Acknowledgements

I would first and foremost like to thank my adviser, Helene Foley, who showed
enthusiasm and faith in me from the first time we met ten years ago up to this very
moment. She shared her experience and passion for performance, and has supported me
all along with invaluable advice and constant encouragement.

I am deeply grateful to Elizabeth Scharffenberger for her detailed and constructive
criticism on my work throughout all of its stages and for her continuous support
throughout my years at Columbia. Her deep knowledge and love for Aristophanes’
comedy has influenced my research and thinking, and this thesis has become an
intelligible project thanks to her.

I am also very thankful to Elizabeth Irwin for her acute comments and for her insights
especially on the plays’ political significance; to Nancy Worman, in whose class
reading Aristophanes became delightful; to Ralph Rosen for his comments and
feedback; and to Suzanne Saïd who helped me set this study in motion in its early
stages.

This project could not have been completed without my husband, Tobias Myers, who
not only read every single version of this thesis and struggled in helping me form and
articulate my thoughts, but also increased my love for theater and literature with his
endless creativity, imagination, and support.

My daughters, Nora and Natalia, though not of great help in the completion of this
thesis, are a constant reminder of the beauty of music, dance, and performance, whose
powerful experience was so ingrained in the lives of Ancient Greeks. I wish that the
joys of performance can always be part of their lives.

ii
CHAPTER 1 – Introduction:
Space and Staging in Greek Drama

It has long been acknowledged that the visual elements of a theatrical performance are
crucial to our understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of any given play.1 Critical
appreciation of the visual component of Greek drama has come a long way since
Aristotle first considered ὄψις, a play’s visual dimension, to be entertaining
(ψυχαγωγικὸν μέν) but also the one of six fundamental parts of Greek tragedy that
requires the least skill and has the least connection to the poetry (ἀτεχνότατον δὲ καὶ
ἥκιστα οἰκεῖον τῆς ποιητικῆς).2 In his recent book on the stagecraft of Aristophanes
Revermann writes:
“...during a performance everything matters: every sound, every movement, every
spatial arrangement, every prop, everything a character says or does. Nothing is
insignificant. Theatre audiences, to deploy a vivid metaphor, are continually floating in
a sea of meaning.”3

Revermann’s book Comic Business is the first extensive and systematic analysis of comic
space that also incorporates theoretical work and aims to reconstruct the visual features of
Aristophanes’ plays.4 In his analysis of how a theatrical performance produces meaning
in ways other than verbal, Revermann considers the communicative process of semiosis,
a playwright’s ability to use many theatrical signs, including visual ones, to produce a
meaningful effect.5 These visual signs include paralinguistic signs, such as speech

1 Works on the visual dimension of Greek Drama are numerous; a few examples of earlier scholarship on
the staging of tragedy include Taplin (1977 and 1978), Wiles (1997), and Rehm (1988, 1992, and 2002),
while on comedy Dover (1972), Russo (1994), Revermann (2006) and Lowe (2006).

2 Aristotle, Poetics 1450b15-20: τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν ἡ μελοποιία μέγιστον τῶν ἡδυσμάτων, ἡ δὲ ὄψις
ψυχαγωγικὸν μέν, ἀτεχνότατον δὲ καὶ ἥκιστα οἰκεῖον τῆς ποιητικῆς·

3 Revermann (2006: 50).

4 Revermann (2006).

1
articulation, rhythm, and speed, as well as utterances like laughing or crying; gestural
signs, including any body movements; and proxemic signs, namely all that relates to the
actors’ spatial positions onstage – their entrances and exits, and their onstage space
configuration.6
The present study is concerned with one aspect of a performance’s visual dimension,
namely the use of space and the employment of visual theatrical signs that inform our
understanding of the space. In theater, space is “the manifest bridge which links the
community with the world of the play”.7 This “space” includes three distinct but
interconnected spaces. I borrow the terminology from Anne Ubersfeld and Michael
Issacharoff.8 Ubersfeld distinguishes three kinds of space: theatrical space, signifying the
physical space surrounding the entire theater area, namely the architectural givens of the
theater; scenic space, which is the space represented onstage, the fictional overlay on the
physical space where the actions takes place; and dramatic space, the space off-stage that
is described in the text; action can take place in this offstage space, but not in front of the
audience’s eyes. Issacharoff uses the phrase “dramatic space” differently, referring to any
space that is described in the text whether onstage or offstage; he thus divides dramatic
space into two categories: mimetic space, which is any space described but also shown
and pointed to onstage, and diegetic space, which is any space that is described in the

5 Revermann (2006: 41-2) points out that semiosis is the process that includes how theatrical signs interact
with each other, what meaning they create and how the audience understands them. In his exploration of
the meaning of ‘theater performance’, Revermann also emphasizes that theatrical communication comes
‘sequentially and is of ephemeral nature’. He then points to the consciousness of both actors and audience
in the fact that something is being performed (p. 38).

6 Revermann (2006: 36-45; 129-45). By “space configuration” Revermann means the “cluster of dramatis
personae on stage at any one time (136).”

7 Revermann (2006: 107).

8 Ubersfeld (1995) and Issacharoff (1981).
2
text, but must be envisioned by the audience, as it is not presented on-stage. I do not see a
significant difference between Issacharoff’s mimetic and Ubersfeld’s scenic space, so I
treat what Issacharoff calls mimetic space as part of what I will call scenic space. I thus
will use the terms theatrical, scenic (or onstage), and diegetic (or offstage) to distinguish
kinds of space in a theatrical performance.9 I prefer the term diegetic rather than
dramatic, because this space is narrated to us through some character onstage.10 This
study will analyze how the scenic space functions in relation to the theatrical and diegetic
space to produce meaning in three early Aristophanic comedies, Acharnians, Knights,
and Wasps. My approach will not be exhaustive, as I will not analyze everything that has
to do with space. Instead, I will concentrate on the way space enhances the plays’ central
themes and issues, focusing especially on the relationship between the oikos and polis
central to both old comedy and Athenian drama as a whole. My approach owes much to
structuralism, but I will also incorporate discussions of the political and historical context
that shaped the composition and reception of the comedies.
In this opening chapter I will first look at a selection of important works on the
visual dimension of Greek tragedy, and then proceed to look at works on comedy. After a
survey of previous scholarship, I will lay out my methodology and will proceed to
discuss Aristophanes’ strategies in creating the onstage space and in signaling changes in
the representation of this space. Being distinct from but also similar to tragedy, comedy
characteristically plays on audience familiarity with tragic conventions, and this is also

9 The terms scenic and onstage, as well as diegetic and offstage space will be used interchangeably.

10 I agree with Poe (2000: 265-6) that the term diegetic is useful in that it brings out the narrative character
of the space. Poe also suggests that diegetic space is less important in comedy than tragedy, because there
are fewer times where the action is supposed to continue out of the sight of the audience. Though tragedy
places more attention to the offstage space, I aim to show that in comedy diegetic space is also crucial for
communicating oppositions and tensions within the play.
3
true in comedy’s use of space. While a number of studies have sought to elucidate the
way the comedies were staged (physicality of the skene, stage machinery, number of
actors, etc.), not much work has been done on showing how increased understanding of
the staging can then help us interpret the plays. Attention to space can be particularly
useful for studying comedy’s abiding interest in the relationship between oikos and polis,
and between individual and community.
In tragedy, examining the staging in connection with the oikos/polis tension has
proved quite fruitful: it has even been suggested that the Greek theater was an inversion
of the assembly space, designed to explore the role of the individual within the polis.11
With his seminal work Stagecraft of Aeschylus Oliver Taplin gave new meaning to the
staging, emphasizing that the playwright wrote for the spectator and that meaning was
created through the visual image (ὄψις) as well as the poetry.12 Apart from looking into
elements of the staging, such as the nature of the skene and the use of stage machinery,13
Taplin was the first to draw connections between these stage conventions and our
interpretation of the plays. Singling out Aeschylus as his subject he analyzes in detail the
scenic space and stage action; he concentrates on the timing, reasons, and effects of exits

11 Wiles (1997: 35-6) notes that, as opposed to the assembly where a speaker stood in the position of a
leader or god on a high rock podium gazing towards the center of the community, in the theater “the
audience looked down not upon their immediate civic environment but upon the sanctuary of the god, and
upon the mountains and sky beyond.” He then adds that “the function of theatre was to take citizens away
from immediate political issues in order to explore the wider moral and religious context of those issues,
and to view the human being outside the context of civilization.” (p.36)

12 Taplin (1977).

13 Hourmouziades (1965), for example, offers one of the first analyses of Greek tragedy’s scenic space and
stage conventions. Among the topics he discusses are the presence and function of the stage building
(skene), the raised stage, the orchestra, the theologeion, the two eisodoi, the mechane and the ekkyklema.
The information he provides is valuable, but descriptive and Hourmouziades does not link these stage
conventions to the interpretation of the plays.
4