Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (review)

Reviews219 the next example. Nevertheless, a number ofcrucial themes do emerge in Hall's chronological approach, and given that providing such a catalogue is precisely the goal ofPerforming theAmerican Frontier, the book succeeds magnificently. Hall has collected, documented, and collated the vast materials upon which maybe built a still more detailed analysis ofthe role played byborder dramas in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Self-consciously addressing the need for a greaterbase ofknowledge, thisbookprovides a tremendous resource thatwill be beneficial not onlyto theater studies but also to anyone interested in the complex relationship between a wide range of cultural productions (literary realism, cinema, even painting and illustration) and the geographical and iconic status of the American West at the height of its imperial period. Nicolas Witschi Western Michigan University Gonda A. H. van Steen. Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 2000. Pp.xvii + 284. $39.50. Venom in Verse discusses the revival and reception ofAristophanes in nineteenthand twentieth-century Greece within a unique cultural and political context. Gonda van Steen provides a very valuable and detailed critical analysis of Aristophanes' role in modern Greece by linkingthe revival ofAristophanic study, translation, and theatrical performance to the search for a new political, cultural , and linguistic identity by the Greek nation during and after Greece's War of Independence in the 1820s. She notes that the performance ofAristophanic comedy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries followed the traditions of Greek popular culture and demoticism as distinct from the cultural conception of the Greek nation as a continuation of Western models and of the archaic linguistic tradition of kathareuousa. Chapter 1 highlights the cultural changes in Greece during the time ofthe scholar Adamantios Koraes, who pushed for the integration of Attic comedy, especially that of Aristophanes, into the lives of the Greeks in the nineteenth century. He found himself striving between the modern and ancient worlds of Greek culture, and sought a way to make Aristophanes' writings acceptable to all. On the other hand, Voltaire's condemnation ofAristophanic ideology certainly had an impact on Koraes' perception of Attic comedy. After struggling 220Comparative Drama with the sometimes"unethical"ideas and language ofAristophanes'plays, Koraes was hesitantly able to accept the bad with the good: "For Koraes, Aristophanes' genius outweighed his offending language and unethical attitude, the prime object of foreign censure" (30). Chapter 2 begins with an explanation ofdemoticism, and ofhow the "new sociopolitical conditions profoundly changed Aristophanes' philological reception as well as his didactic role" (44). During the 1880s the language debate in Greece came to a definite head when the demoticist movement attempted to standardize Greek dialects and modernize the older, more diverse forms of cultural expression into one official language. Van Steen gives a detailed outline of the debut of Greek revival theater during this time period which leads into the discussion of the first production ofAristophanes' Plutus, adapted into politicized prose by Michael Chourmouzes, who was praised for his successful translation . Aristophanes'works, through satiricaljournals, demotic translations, and performances such as Chourmouzes' Plutus, became more and more popular as the classical versions were updated and began to reach a broader, more diversified audience. On the other hand, some classicists—for example, such as Ioannes Raptarches—were producing versions ofAristophanes'works in the classic language , part ofthe kathareuousa movementwhich claimed that the demotic translations were disrespectful to the classical Greek literacy. Thus, as van Steen notes, "the coexistence of varying aesthetics in literary and theatrical reception was as commonplace as the cohabitation of competing ideologies within Greek culture and national territories" (75). Chapter 3 deals with the treatment ofAristophanes'Lysistrata from 1900 to 1940. During this period therewas a definite boom in the productions ofthe play, yet there was little critical attention from the press and other media.A playabout women, Lysistrata originally sent profeminist messages, which, however, were counteracted in theproductionsand translations ofthe earlytwentieth century. To begin with, all-male casts characterized several productions ofLysistrata in the early twentieth century. Women were in fact forbidden in some cases from even attending performances. This in and of itself, van Steen argues, is enough to illuminate the antifeminist translations ofthe play. To support her argument further , van Steen...