San Antonio College Library

"In recent decades literary approaches to drama have multiplied: new historical, intertextual, political, performative and metatheatrical, socio-linguistic, gender-driven, transgenre-driven. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction to and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From the birth of comedy in Greece to its end in Rome, from the Hellenistic diffusion of performances beginning...

In Roman Laughter, the first book-length study of Plautus, Segal argues that this neglected writer, often denounced by scholars for such crimes as "barbarous clownery," merits our serious attention precisely because he was the most successful poet of the ancient world. He analyzes the reasons behind this success, placing the author in his social and historical context and observing that Plautus's wildly comedic flouting of Roman law and custom had...

"This book offers a comprehensive examination of the language of Roman comedy in general and that of Terence in particular. The study explores Terence's use of language to differentiate his characters, and his language in relation to that of the comic fragments of the palliata, the togata and the atellana. Linguistic categories in the Terentian corpus explored include colloquialisms, archaisms, hellenisms and idiolectal features. Terence is shown...