Aristophanes And Athenian Democracy

Being the greatest author of comedy in ancient Greece, Aristophanes considered politics greatly in hispoems. The cultural background as well as the social background endows Aristophanes with the possibilityand chance to write politics within his comedy; Three of the main problems which endangered Atheniandemocracy were discussed under the cover of comedy, which to a large extent shows the seriousness ofaristophanic comedy; The writing style of Aristophanes which consists of two parts, the direct way ofepisodes and the indirect way of irrational elements, enabled arisophanic comedy to influence Atheniansociety effectively.There are three chapters beside the introduction and epilogue, the main content of whose are asfollows:The introduction discusses mainly the significance and research status of this theme, and the waysand means in the writing of this paper.The first chapter illustrates the background of Aristophanic comedy: including the political characterof the traditional greek poetic, and that of tragedy and philosophy back then, the later part of this chapterdeals with the dilemma which Athenians were facing in the late5thcentury B.C.The second chapter demonstrates three of the main concerns of Aristophanes’s politics in the historicalcontext, including Aristophanes’s attitudes toward political leaders, peace and war, and corrupt practices,analyses the reason why Aristophanes exaggerated the situations.The third chapter reviews Aristophanes’s writing style, including his usage of episode and irrationalelements and their roles in the plays, meanwhile, this chapter examines the influence to the society caused by comedy in both active and passive ways.