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Utopias

Bierl, Anton. (2019) Utopias. In: The Encyclopedia of Greek Comedy. New York, pp. 989-991.

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Official URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/73956/

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Abstract

In Old Comedy we do not find utopias in the modern sense, but utopia-like ideas are fundamental to the genre. Since Old Comedy is highly political, the revolutionary measures taken in Ecclesiazusae can be regarded as precursors to the fully developed utopias of the modern era. Both are bound up with a mythical-ritual pattern. The model of a festival of exception, of inversion, and of the accompanying myth of reversion to the primordial conditions of the ambivalent "Age of Cronus" that preceded the reign of Zeus, includes inter alia utopian ideas. Like the Golden Age, the Better World is at risk of toppling over into its opposite. The future full of promise becomes an imagined reality through emphasis on the new, which however is always simultaneously equated with the olden days. Aristophanes extends the mythical-ritual schema of the original Cockaigne folktale into utopian scenarios of politics and of intellectual debate on poetry, religion and philosophy.
Faculties and Departments:04 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > Departement Altertumswissenschaften > Fachbereich Gräzistik
UniBasel Contributors:Bierl, Anton F.H.
Item Type:Book Section, refereed
Book Section Subtype:Further Contribution in a Book
Publisher:Wiley
ISBN:978-1-118-60504-2
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Book item
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Last Modified:10 Mar 2020 09:16
Deposited On:10 Mar 2020 09:16

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