Laughing Awry: Plautus and Tragicomedy by Erik Gunderson

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 435 to Aristotle’s theory and as a more consistent application of Aristotle’s own principles. Yet Inwood also reminds us, in his opening chapters, that Aristotle’s immediate successors tended to resolve the “tensions and hesitations of the master” by adopting positions that were “clearer, cleaner, and that much less subtle” (27). Some later students of Aristotle’s ethics (e.g., Aquinas) might well regard Alexander’s neglect of Aristotle’s non-naturalism in this light. In short, not everyone will draw from Inwood’s narrative the philosophical conclusions that Inwood himself draws. Future scholarship will nonetheless be indebted to his masterly study of the period. Colgate University Jacob Klein Laughing Awry: Plautus and Tragicomedy. By Erik Gunderson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. x, 283. You know what they say about explaining jokes and dissecting frogs: you understand them better, but they (usually) die in the process. Likewise reviewing books, especially one like Gunderson’s that streaks breathlessly across the Roman stage while strewing insight, witticism, and not a little confusion. Newcomers to Roman comedy need not apply: those without a firm grounding will quickly become lost and even specialists will find their patience tested by a grating prose style and muddy argumentation. But this book is not so much for learning new things about Plautus as for unlearning some things you thought you knew well, and in this regard Gunderson regularly manages to hit a hard target. Readers willing to work to extract them will find keen observations and bold contributions, and although it is difficult to identify a coherent through-line for the book as a whole, Gunderson’s analyses of individual scenes, characters, and themes can repay the hunt. Chapter One ostensibly introduces the book’s methodology and, after an oddly-fitting summary of Federico Fellini’s I Clowns (important points of contact between the film and Plautus can be glimpsed but Gunderson does not connect the dots), offers a promising outline of significant ways in which everything to do with Plautus defies categorization: his identity, corpus, genre, jokes, and even his audiences cannot stand without whatever we construe as their opposites. “On the one hand, comedy gives pleasure by circumventing barriers. But, on the other, ‘comedy’ as a designation can itself constitute a barrier. Only ‘comedy’ lets us enjoy comedy” (6). Comic violence is only funny if we get that real violence is tragic; the set-up and the punch line have to bounce off a reasonable scenario to land as a joke. The chapter closes with a convoluted Lacanian apparatus that reappears throughout the book but may seem both unnecessary and unnecessarily off-putting to many readers. Chapter Two is Gunderson’s sharpest and most cohesive contribution, and here he deconstructs the varied ways the ancients constructed “Plautus.” He lays out the circular and subjective approach that reader-scholars such as Aelius Stilo and Varro used to define the Plautine canon, Plautinity, and Plautus’ biography; how Terence builds a (forgettable) Plautus in order to fashion his own image as a new playwright; and how later poets such as Catullus, Ovid, and Horace deploy a selectively crafted Plautus for their own ends. There are some missteps—few, I think, would agree that the “narrative voice of the Amores is relatively sincere” (39)—but Gunderson highlights well how easily authors can can make Plautus be and say whatever is needed for producing their own identity. 436 PHOENIX In Chapter Three Gunderson explores the gaps between Plautine characters who believe words merely describe reality (e.g., the socially powerful who depend on the status quo for their power) and the disenfranchised (e.g., servi, meretrices, etc.) who know how to employ words to manipulate the realities of those above them. As he neatly observes, “Trickery lets them use the only thing they do have, ‘mere words’ to change the things of the world and, with them, the recognized words of the world as well” (66–67). The main points here have been articulated by others before,1 but Gunderson’s readings of Truculentus and of the manipulation of the audience are perceptive. Chapter Four continues in a similar vein, examining a variety...