A Poet at Work: The Parody of Helen in the Thesmophoriazusae

NIEDDU, GIAN FRANCO FILIPPO

2004-01-01

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Abstract

Moving from the complex and various ways and principles by which parody works, the A. submits this section of the comedy to a precise and detailed analysis which follows step by step the construction of a comic text on the pattern of a tragic text, in order to investigate how the poet, by means of quotations and allusions, cuttings, displacements, shortenings, blendings, omissions, inexpected links and innovations (‘disarranging’ and ‘rearranging’), rewrites his new, parodying text. This way of working is a strong proof that it was just an established use of writing that allowed the comic poet such a complete mastery of a written text intended to be parodied, a fact long denied or passed over by the accepted opinion imposed by oralist theories.