Stop Making Sense: The Politics of Aristophanic Madness

This paper discusses the use of madness in Aristophanic Comedy, and in particular how it is used as a means of evaluating and interrogating political interventions. The well-known theme of madness in Aristophanes's Wasps provides the frame. Interpreting Philocleon's madness has proved problematic because the complexity of comic madness has been under-estimated. Against negative models of madness that dominate in tragedy and in political discourse, madness in comedy can be not only a means of interrogating ideological and political norms, but also a constructive and even heroic form of behavior, which draws on epic and religious associations. Bdelycleon's attempt to cure his father removes the positive substance and political value that anchors his father's insanity, which leads to the aporetic finale.