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Notes Introduction 1. Carrière 1979 and Rösler 1986 feature Bakhtin in their studies. Goldhill 1991 discusses carnival culture in his chapter on Aristophanes, and it is the focal point in Edwards 1993. Most comprehensive is von Möllendorf 1995, whose book is explicitly focused on the Aristophanic grotesque. 2. Bakhtin 1968. Major studies of carnival in the context of Bakhtin’s other work are Clark and Holquist 1984, Emerson and Morson 1990, and Holquist 1990. 3. Bakhtin 1968 provides abundant documentation of these bodily phenomena drawn from the Middle Ages. He sees their origin, however, as much older and derived from the popular traditions of laughter from preliterate societies . From there, they are preserved in festival traditions and in literary adaptations . With regard to the latter, Bakhtin is particularly interested in the parodic and serio-comic genres of Greco-Roman antiquity as having played a crucial role in the transmission of carnival laughter to the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. 4. Acharnians 633–40. Aristophanes’ career begins with Banqueters in 427 b.c.e. and ends with Aiolosokon and Cocalus, which were produced by his son Araros after Aristophanes’ death, sometime after 388. The eleven plays we have are spread across nearly the full spectrum of his career: Acharnians (425), Knights (424), Clouds (423: first version; second version revised c. 420–17, never produced . For the evidence see Dover 1968.lxxx), Wasps (422), Peace (421), Birds (414), Lysistrata (411), Thesmophoriazusae (411), Frogs (405), Ecclesiazusae (393), Wealth (388). 5. Slater 2002.9–10 describes well the slide Aristophanes, and perhaps others , were able to make, playing on the ambivalence of didaskalos: from “teacher of the chorus” to “teacher” of the demos. The combination of serious and comic features (spoudogeloion) is, for Bakhtin, one of the crucial indicators of literature with carnival links. In Aristophanes, the conjunction is virtually institutionalized. 6. On a more direct level, the mutability of character is itself an important comic characteristic, from Dikaiopolis’ impersonation of Telephus in Acharnians , to the multiple personalities of Euripides in Thesmophoriazusae, and the complicated exchanges of (Heracles’) identity that Dionysus and Xanthias undergo in Frogs. 7. The most comprehensive account is that of de Ste. Croix 1972, whose Aristophanes is clearly a shill for aristocratic attitudes. Edwards 1993 argues for an overall conservative orientation on the part of Aristophanes. Konstan 183 1995.15–28, offers a nuanced reading of the ideological structure of Wasps that highlights its attempt “to valorize the upper-class ideals of withdrawal and privatism ” (p. 27). See also Carter 1986. While I do not disagree with these general conclusions, the competitive pressures on Aristophanic comedy did not allow it to be complacently in the service of a single ideology. For a new attempt to balance these competing claims, see Platter 2005. 8. Bakhtin 1981.273. See also his remarks (p. 300) on the need for “sociological stylistics” (emphasis in original). 9. See also DeMan 1983. For the intellectual milieu out of which Bakhtin emerged, see Clark and Holquist 1984, Emerson and Morson 1990, and Bernard -Donals 1994. 10. Rubino 1993.141–42; see also Barta et al. 2001.2. 11. The Russian is nezavershennost’. For a full discussion of its significance for Bakhtin, see Emerson and Morson 1990.36–38. 12. The details of the arrest are unclear. For a discussion of the evidence, see Holquist 1990.8–9 and Clark and Holquist 1984.120–45. 13. This continues to be the best known of Bakhtin’s works, particularly the Introduction, in which he lays out the basic characteristics of carnival culture. Emphasis on other aspects of Bakhtin’s work in the West owes much to Kristeva 1969 and 1980. See also Todorov 1984. 14. This is one of the most important reasons for Bakhtin’s characterization of the Platonic dialogue as one of the foundation texts of serio-comic, carnival literature. Plato’s Socrates, the “wise” man who denies the possibility of human wisdom, represents one of the most important and pervasive Menippean elements found in the philosophical dialogues of Lucian and others; see Bakhtin 1984. 15. So Bakhtin 1986.132 and 1981.125. See also Clark and Holquist 1984.272 and Emerson and Morson 1990.433–60. 16. Bakhtin 1981.213, 218–19; see also Platter 2001.57–59. 17. “Epic” consciousness is at the opposite end of the spectrum from that of the “novel,” the style of composition (including the genre of the novel itself) that performs for later periods what the carnivalized...

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