Dienstag, den 28.11.2017
KO2-F-150 |
Prof. Dr. E. HALL (London)
Hephaistos and the History of Early Greek Comedy
Hephaestus is associated with laughter from his earliest appearances in ancient Greek literature and art. This lecture examines different manifestations of Comic Hephaestus and argues that his instrumental role in the emergence and evolution of Greek comic theatre has been neglected. He appeared both as the butt of comic laughter, as kōmōidoumenos, in Iliad I and the fragmentary Homeric Hymn to Dionysus and as the author/director of comic laughter in Odyssey 8, Alcaeus frg. 349a-d and Plato Rep. 2.378d. But his presence as kōmastēs in Corinthian and Attic vase-painting and Epicharmus’ Hephaistos or Komasts point to the overall importance of the ‘Return of Hephaistos’ as a basic plot-structure in Old Comedy, in general consisting of the alienation/disaffection of non-elite hero followed by joyful return/reintegration into community after scoring a point and ending in a kōmos. Finally, Hephaistos was more frequently a character in comic and satyric drama than the extant complete plays would lead us to believe: he appeared in plays by Alcaeus of Eretria, Sophocles, Alcaeus Comicus and unnamed plays portrayed in 4th-century vase-painting.
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