A study in reception: the British debates over Aristophanes' politics and influence

Abstract

Scholars have long debated Aristophanes’ political outlook and the influence of his plays on Athenian life, but what has been underappreciated up to this point is that these dual questionshaveformedoneofthecentralpointsofthemodernreceptionofAristophanes, particularly in Britain. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, renewed attention was given to the plays of Aristophanes and their place in the Athenian democratic experience. Evaluations of the plays became entangled in debates about democracy itself, and the most important and disputed issues were Aristophanes’ political views and practical influence. The intensity of these arguments subsided in the late nineteenth century, and a new interpretation emerged, one that steered away from dogmatic opinion and portrayed Aristophanes as a political moderate. This essay will explore these historical arguments, and it will situate current scholarship in light of positions developed in Romantic and Victorian Britain. It will suggest that modern scholars are linked to earlier critics who considered the same questions but whose cultural and political attitudes compelled them to understand the Greeks very differently.