Aristophanes Bibliography
Bowie, A. M. Aristophanes: Myth, Comedy, and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. [An accessibly written account of Old Comedy that sees it in its ritual, festival, and cultural contexts and as plays about their audience but released from ordinary constraints. The chapter on Frogs considers the Eleusinian mysteries and their relevance to Dionysus’ journey to the underworld, the connection of the mysteries to the mockery of political figures ("the Eleusinian Mysteries are evoked as a way of thinking about participation in and ordering of the state"), and the relation of the mysteries to the contest of the poets. The victorious poet, he argues, is actually Aristophanes.]
Cartledge, Paul. Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1990. [Jaunty, with some useful details about Aristophanes and Athenian life, but rather short and superficial, providing general background for the plays rather than analytical readings. Includes a brief, lightly annotated bibliography.]
Croiset, Maurice. Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens, trs. James Loeb. 1909; rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1973. [Old-fashioned but still useful for relative beginners. The introduction provides a general discussion of Athenian politics and comedy and sees Aristophanes (controversially) as spokesman for the oligarchs. The section on Frogs identifies political issues and rather inconclusively elicits Aristophanes' opinions.]
Dover. K. J. Aristophanic Comedy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,, 1972. [Highly informative but not strongly interpretive. Chapters on the survival of the text, on theatrical conditions, on the uses of fantasy, on the choral sections and theatrical references, and on style and substance introduce chapters on the individual plays. That on Frogs includes a summary and discussions of the choruses, the machinery of the play, its composition, and its treatment of tragedy.]
Dover, Kenneth, ed. Aristophanes: Frogs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. [An edition of the Greek text, with a full introduction and commentary. The introduction covers the life of Aristophanes, the composition and structure of the play, the Aeschylus-Euripides agon, the characters of Dionysus and Xanthias, the identity of the doorkeeper, the choruses, the politics, the history of the text and the production of the play. The commentary has much material explaining grammatical points but much more illuminating the people, issues, and probable production of the play.]
Epstein, Paul. "Dionysus’ Journey of Self-Discovery in The Frogs of Aristophanes." Dionysus 9 (1985): 19-35. ["Dionysus, obedient to the powers of Hades and Olympus, discovers what defines his patronage of Tragedy and thereby his true divinity; this completes the universal Comedy of which Dionysus has been the main figure" (p. 21).]
Harriott, Rosemary M. Aristophanes: Poet and Dramatist. London: Croom Helm, 1986. [Harriott's method begins with the analysis of small units--speeches and conversations, for example, concentrating on problems and moving therefore to larger issues. Treatments of individual plays are therefore spread throughout the book, but the most detailed treatment of Frogs (pp. 106-16) sees it as divided into distinctly different halves but argues that unity is not a significant aesthetic criterion.]
Heiden, Bruce. "Tragedy and Comedy in the Frogs of Aristophanes." Ramus 20 (1991): 95-111. [Notes that the great comic agon between Aeschylus and Euripides contains no reference to comedy, and argues that the omission shows the city's neglect of comedy and its failure to follow the repeated advice of comedy to seek peace with Sparta.]
Konstan, David. Greek Comedy and Ideology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. [The role of the poet is to mediate between the individualistic, violent world of the hero (Herakles) and the mystic, communal world of the Chorus of Initiates. The plot moves from the individual at the margins of culture to the marketplace of the city, and it follows the ritual pattern by which identity is lost and reconstituted. The pattern culminates in the poetry contest that represents Dionysus’ real goal, "the clash of views before a discerning audience at the city’s center."]
Lada-Richards, Ismene. Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes' Frogs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. [A full, highly informed, and rather advanced discussion of the play, sophisticated in both its scholarship and its critical theory, that sets Aristophanes' treatment of Dionysus in his religious and mythic context as ambiguously within the civic order and apart from it: Dionysus as god of wine, of the theater, and of the Elusinian/Bacchic mysteries. His journey to the afterlife "qualifies as a 'liminal' transition towards his final 'reaggregation' into the idealized image of the polis' community." Seeks to look at the variety of responses available to Athenian culture.]
MacDowell, Douglas M. Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays. [Briefly discusses the audience of Aristophanes, and reads each play in detail. These readings amount to extended notes--in the case of Frogs on Dionysus, on slaves and the navy, on the two festivals used in the play, on politics, on Euripedes and Aeschylus, on Alcibiades and the military situation, and on the second performance. Factually informative but not critically stimulating.]
McLeish, Kenneth. The Theatre of Aristophanes. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980. [Concentrates, as the title suggests, on the practical elements of Athenian comic theater, but extends the discussion to theatrical reality and illusion, to characters, and to theatrical conventions. Argues the Frogs is a "company" play in which all three actors have virtually equal importance.]
Moorton, Richard F., Jr. "Rites of Passage in Aristophanes' Frogs." Classical Journal 84.4 (April-May 1989): 308-23. [Applies to the play the ideas of Arnold van Gennep's The Rites of Passage (1909, trs. 1960) to conclude that "The Frogs incorporates a sequence and countersequence of rites of passage which encode the comedy's great theme of death and rebirth" (p. 323).]
Reckford, Kenneth J. Aristophanes' Old and New Comedy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. [Sees Frogs as the last of the Old Comedies by Aristophanes, a play, inspired by the death of Euripides, that is about death in several senses (not the least being the death of Old Comedy), to whose country the immortal Dionysus is escorted by mystical frogs, in whose mysteries he is initiated. But after the funny episodes and the serious parabasis, the play's comic nature changes, with the final procession serving as an inverted funeral rite.]
Riu, Xavier. Dionysism and Comedy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. [Sees Old Comedy as ritual and performance; long introductory chapters on "the reading of Old Comedy" and on "Dionysism and Comedy" introduce readings of individual plays. Looks particularly at the representation of traditional elements in the character of Dionysus in The Frogs and asserts that Aristophanes gives no clear reason for the choice of Aeschylus at the end. Arguments for the dramatic and thematic unity of the play are also invalid. But Riu’s insistence that Aeschylus is the wrong choice makes it difficult for him to come to a convincing conclusion.]
Russo, Carlo Ferdinando. Aristophanes: an Author for the Stage, trs. Kevin Wren. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. [Translation and revision of an Italian version of 1962. The chapter chapter on the Frogs (pp. 198-219) primarily concerns the nature and consequences of the revision that, Russo suggests, Aristophanes undertook after the death of Sophocles and before the first production of the play.]
Segal, Charles Paul. "Dionysus and the Unity of the Frogs." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 65 (1961): 207-42. [Dionysus is the character who unifies the two halves of the play. "Dionysus appears as the embodiment of the comic spirit seeking a stable definition of itself and its aims; and his search is presented primarily through the motifs of disguise and changeability" (211). Dionysus seeks to reconcile the moral and entertaining functions of comedy, and the relation of moral instruction to entertainment is a key issue in the debate between Aeschylus and Euripides. Dionysus develops into a god of "communal solidarity" who absorbs his separate ritual identities, and his final return to Athens with Aeschylus signifies a spiritual rebirth.]
Silk, M. S. Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. [Concerned with the plays of Aristophanes as a defining moment for comedy and with the efforts of Aristophanes himself to define what comedy is and should be. The introduction includes excellent brief introductions to Old Comedy (especially its production) and to Aristophanes. Chapters on openings, on comedy and tragedy, language and style, lyric poetry, characters, causality and plot, and themes and issues do not include a concerted reading of Frogs, but the general issues illuminate the play. Addressed to the general (non-Greek-speaking) reader who is familiar with the plays.]
Slater, Niall W. Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. [As its title suggests, Slater's book takes an approach grounded in performance theory and develops the further idea that a salient characteristic of Aristophanes' plays is "metatheater," or the distinct self-consciousness (a) that the plays are being performed and (b) that they are in some sense critical of other plays. Introductory chapters on metatheatrical elements and on Athenian actors are followed by treatments of individual plays. The chapter on Frogs moves chronologically through the play and offers a sound reading, concentrating on the agon between Euripedes and Aeschylus and concluding that the appeal for a return to Aeschylean tragedy and for inclusion of the oligarchic faction was too late.]
Sommerstein, Alan H., ed. Aristophanes: Frogs, Vol. 9 of The Comedies of Aristophanes. Warminster, U.K.: Aris and Phillips, 1996. [An edition of the Greek text with an excellent introduction, a fine translation, and extensive commentary, keyed to the English rather than Greek text.]
Spatz, Lois. Aristophanes. Boston: Twayne, 1978. [Critical discussion of each of the extant plays. The treatment of Frogs (for example) follows the plot of the play rather closely but makes useful if somewhat reductive comments.]
Whitman, Cedric H. Aristophanes and the Comic Hero. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. [Argues that Aristophanes transcends satire and creates, through the fantasy of the individualized comic hero, a myth of his own times. The comic hero is a downtrodden rogue whose cleverness and aggression allow him to impose his saving fantasy on reality and to thumb his nose at the powers that be. In Frogs Dionysus seeks to recover his own identity and that of Athenian democracy. The agon is less literary criticism than a contrast of the glorious past to contemporary decay. The ambiguous ending reflects the paradox of seeking a life-giving poet among the dead.]