The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy

By Jeffrey Henderson

Book Overview

The pervasive and unrestrained use of obscenity has long been acknowledged as a major feature of fifth-century Attic Comedy; no other Western art form relies so heavily on the sexual and scatological dimensions of language. This acclaimed book, now in a new edition, offers both a comprehensive discussion of the dynamics of Greek obscenity and a detailed commentary on the terminology itself.

After contrasting the peculiar characteristics of the Greek notion of obscenity to modern-day ideas, Henderson discusses obscenity's role in the development of Attic Comedy, its historical origins, varieties, and dramatic function. His analysis of obscene terminology sheds new light on Greek culture, and his discussion of Greek homosexuality offers a refreshing corrective to the idealized Platonic view. He also looks in detail at the part obscenity plays in each of Aristophanes' eleven surviving plays. The latter part of the book identifies all the obscene terminology found in the extant examples of Attic Comedy, both complete plays and fragments. Although these terminological entries are arranged in numbered paragraphs resembling a glossary, they can also be read as independent essays on the various aspects of comic obscenity. Terms are explained as they occur in each individual context and in relation to typologically similar terminology. With newly corrected and updated philological material, this second edition of Maculate Muse will serve as an invaluable reference work for the study of Greek drama.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195066855
• ISBN13: 9780195066852
• Release Date: February 1991
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

How to talk dirty in classical Greek!

I really enjoyed this book and heartily recommend it for the neophyte student in classical theater studies. Jeffrey Henderson repeats the actual Greek characters for common sexual body parts so often that even the casual reader soon begins to feel like a real classical scholar (or an ancient sailor)! Scholars have traditionally declined to elucidate, evaluate or even discuss the nature and function of sexual and body function language in Attic Comedy (Attican, or Athenian, new comedy, that lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers, ending about 260 B.C.) This despite the fact that Aristophanes and his contemporaries wove rich, ribald tapestries of obscene words, allusions, double entendres and bawdy sight gags throughout their works. Classical researcher Jeffrey Henderson, in his The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, attributes this to a notion that obscenity has only peripheral relevance to the actual meaning and value of the plays (they were "attention getters" to win the favor of restless audiences or, conversely, such things were not considered obscene by the Greeks). Fallacious assumptions, says Henderson. The academy's recent embrace of the undeniable accomplishments of solid gay and feminist scholarship in the areas of human sexuality and its expressions has freed researchers in the area of Classic (Old and Middle) comedy to finally acknowledge the integral connection of obscenity to the main themes of the plays, the stage actions, the development of plot and the characterization of personae. To this end, Henderson gives, in The Maculate Muse, what may be the foremost comprehensive attempt to identify and discuss all the extant obscene terminology of Attic comedy and to assess the historical, cultural and literary factors which led to obscenity's focal position in the plays of Aristophanes and others of his day. The author modestly admits that much more needs to be done. Henderson makes a case for the need for further investigation of, not merely group behavior and relative behavior to societal institutions (like marriage and public events) but also exact sexual behavior (note: this will be difficult if not impossible due to lack of objective documentation...people in every society censor/idealize their private behaviors when representing them). This reprint of Jeffrey Henderson's original 1971 dissertation, with new preface, addenda, corrigenda and retractanda, is a "starting point" and a valuable tool for a deeper appreciation of the social context of the Attic comedies. Despite the current climate of sexual conservatism in America, contemporary theater is still a glorious window into the secular and profane organic and psychosexual forces, hand in hand with intellect and society, which coshape our lives. A sensitive reevaluation of the realistic framework of the 5th century Greek comic writers reveals that the vagaries of sexuality and our attitudes toward it in the arts is an amorphous constant