Comedy and Humor in the Scholia of Aristophanes: γέλως and κωμῳδία
Abstract
This paper presents the perception that the scholiasts have about the humor of comedy. I have analyzed all the scholia that mention the key terms γέλως and κωμῳδία. In order to understand the theoretical background that supports the annotation, firstly, I recover the main doctrines of Antiquity on comedy and humor and, secondly, I describe the system applied by the scholiasts to the explanation of humor. Following the lines revealed by the analysis, I study the cartoonish and incongruous nature of comedy, the participation of aischrology, the servile humor, certain comic resources such as paronymy and para prosdokian, as well as some special uses of γέλως. The study reveals that the notes of the scholiasts are not random, but that they respond to a specific way of understanding the types of humor that can appear in a comedy.
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