This book presents a comprehensive account of features of Latin that emerge from dialogue: commands and requests, command softeners and strengtheners, statement hedges, interruptions, attention-getters, greetings and closings. In analyzing these features, Peter Barrios-Lech employs a quantitative method and draws on all the data from Roman comedy and the fragments of Latin drama. In the first three parts, on commands and requests, particles, attention-getters and interruptions, the driving questions are firstly - what leads the speaker to choose one form over another? And secondly - how do the playwrights use these features to characterize on the linguistic level? Part IV analyzes dialogues among equals and slave speech, and employs data-driven analyses to show how speakers enact roles and construct relationships with each other through conversation. The book will be important to all scholars of Latin, and especially to scholars of Roman drama.

Provides a comprehensive critical engagement with Roman comedy and its reception presented by leading international scholars in accessible and up-to-date chapters.

Ancient Greek comedy relied primarily on its text and words for the fulfilment of its humorous effects and aesthetic goals. In the wake of a rich tradition of previous scholarship, this volume explores a variety of linguistic materials and stylistic artifices exploited by the Greek comic poets, from vocabulary and figures of speech (metaphors, similes, rhyme) to types of joke, obscenity, and the mechanisms of parody. Most of the chapters focus on Aristophanes and Old Comedy, which offers the richest arsenal of such techniques, but the less ploughed fields of Middle and New Comedy are also explored. Emphasis is placed on practical criticism and textual readings, on the examination of particular artifices of speech and the analysis of individual passages. The main purpose is to highlight the use of language for the achievement of the aesthetic, artistic, and intellectual purposes of ancient comedy, in particular for the generation of humour and comic effect, the delineation of characters, the transmission of ideological messages, and the construction of poetic meaning. The volume will be useful to scholars of ancient drama, linguists, students of humour, and scholars of Classical literature in general.

This contribution by Gesine Manuwald provides an introduction to all varieties of ‘Roman comedy’, including primarily fabula palliata (‘New Comedy’, as represented by Plautus and Terence) as well as fabula togata, fabula Atellana, mimus and pantomimus. It examines the major developments in the establishment of these dramatic genres, their main characteristics, the performance contexts for them in Republican Rome, and their reception. The presentation of the key facts is accompanied by a description of the influential turns and recent trends in scholarship on Roman comedy. The essay is designed for scholars, teachers and (graduate) students who have some familiarity with Roman literature and are looking for (further) orientation in the area of Roman comedy.

Explores in depth how bilingualism in the correspondence of elite Romans illuminates their lives, relationships and identities.

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction to and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From its birth in Greece to its end in Rome, from its Hellenistic to its Imperial receptions, no topic is neglected. The 41 essays offer cutting-edge guides through comedy's immense terrain.