Der komische Chor – das Chorische der ‚komischen Person‘

Abstract

While the tragic chorus has drawn much attention and analysis, the comedic chorus has gone largely overlooked in the fields of classical philology, literary studies, philosophy, and theater studies. But the chorus of Greek comedy is distinct from that of tragedy. It is a kind of swarm. It lives on in the comical personage of later comedies, though these presumably have no chorus. The choruses oppose the unity of dramatic form, as is shown in particular by the parabasis. They introduce displacements that repeatedly disturb the representations demanded by the tragic form and usher in the performative events that take place between the chorus and the spectators (and listeners). As this article shows, choric elements are therefore hardly an outdated episode of theatrical presentation. Comical personages like Buffo and Pulcinella are not closed, individuated characters but theatrical figures that belong in a series. They come from a chorus without preexisting distinctions and boundaries—a chorus of those who do not belong, of indefinite heterogeneities.