Aristophanes: Four Plays

Clouds, Birds, Lysistrata, Women of the Assembly

Aristophanes: Four Plays
Aaron Poochigian, Aristophanes
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Trade Paperback
h211 x 140mm - 432pg
6 May 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9781324091561
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A ristophanes' s satirical masterpieces, immensely popular with the Athenian public, were frequently crude, even obscene. His plays revealed to his contemporaries, and now teach us today, that when those in power act obscenely, patriotic obscenity is a fitting response. Until now, English translations have failed to capture Aristophanes' s poetic genius. Aaron Poochigian, the first poet-classicist to tackle these plays in a generation, offers ? effortlessly readable and genuinely theatrical? (Simon Armitage) versions of four of Aristophanes' s most entertaining, provocative, and lyrically ingenious comedies, finally giving twenty-first-century readers a sense of the subversive pleasure audiences felt when these works were first performed on the Athenian stage.
"Aristophanes was a funny, often obscene, social commentator, and he was also a brilliantly fluent, wide-ranging poet, whose lyric rhythms were recited and sung to music, with dancing. It' s very rare for modern translators to convey his poetic virtuosity or make any attempt to bring his meters to life. But Aaron Poochigan has achieved this feat, crafting polymetric translations that convey the whole range of Aristophanes' s larger-than-life characters and provocative, alternative reality scenarios. This new Aristophanes is zany, sharp, inventive, vivacious, and surprisingly relevant for our times. " -- Emily Wilson, translator of Homer' s Odyssey "Poochigian has reanimated this quartet of Greek dramas with an approach that conveys all the comic energies, political urgencies, and philosophical concerns of the original plays. Alive and alert to the evolutions and mutations of contemporary language but tuned to the pitch and rhythms of ancient literature, these energetic and adroit twenty-first century translations are both effortlessly readable and genuinely theatrical-as lively on the page as they will be on any stage. " -- Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
Aristophanes was the most celebrated comic playwright in fifth century BCE Athens. Aaron Poochigian earned a Ph. D. in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. He is the translator of, among other classical works, Sappho' s poetry (published under the title Stung with Love), Apollonius' s Jason and the Argonauts, and four plays by Aristophanes: Lysistrata, Clouds, Birds, and Women of the Assembly. He has published two books of poetry-The Cosmic Purr and Manhattanite-and a novel-in-verse, Mr. Either/Or. His poems have appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, and POETRY.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781324091561
Published: 6 May 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Format: Trade Paperback
Height: 211mm
Width: 140mm
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 334g
Pages: 432

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