Books by Francesco Morosi
That a strong relationship must have existed between Ben Jonson’s theatre works and Aristophanes’... more That a strong relationship must have existed between Ben Jonson’s theatre works and Aristophanes’ plays is a long-standing scholarly commonplace. The question, however, has hardly ever been approached from a truly comparative perspective, taking into account the formal, structural, literary, and ideological peculiarities of both Aristophanic and Jonsonian drama.
This book aims to address this issue with reference to an enlightening case study – meta-performance, a fundamental comic strategy that characterizes both authors and their corpora. Scenes of meta-performance frequently depict would-be poets, incompetent musicians, or treacherous intellectuals. But how do Aristophanes and Ben Jonson represent poetic, musical, and artistic performances within their own plays?
At the crossroads of philology, reception studies, and comparative studies, this book will make a significant contribution toward a substantial re-evaluation of Ben Jonson’s classical reading and dramatic strategies.
Dioniso, 2020
Aristofane è uno degli autori più studiati della letteratura greca antica, ma resta uno dei più s... more Aristofane è uno degli autori più studiati della letteratura greca antica, ma resta uno dei più sfuggenti. Molte questioni, di grande portata e di dettaglio, sono ancora oggetto di dibattito, e rendono particolarmente opportuni gli approcci capaci di interpretazioni a tutto tondo – capaci cioè di integrare la lettura analitica dei singoli testi in una visione generale del teatro aristofaneo.
Questo volume si propone di fare il punto, in termini metodologici e nello specifico di singoli problemi, su alcuni degli elementi cruciali perl’interpretazione di Aristofane: l’eroe comico e la sua natura, l’impatto del desiderio sull’azione comica, il valore semiotico di spazio e tempo nella costruzione della drammaturgia, il peso della religione, della tragedia e del pensiero filosofico coevi nell’ideologia dell’autore.
Con la sua fantasia inesauribile, Aristofane è senza dubbio uno dei veri inventori del teatro eur... more Con la sua fantasia inesauribile, Aristofane è senza dubbio uno dei veri inventori del teatro europeo. Ma proprio la fantasia esplosiva di Aristofane ha impedito per molto tempo alla critica di considerare la sua produzione alla stregua di quella di autori ritenuti più seri e drammaturgicamente inquadrati. Questo studio si propone di offrire una nuova prospettiva sulla tecnica teatrale di Aristofane, a partire da un’indagine della gestione dello spazio scenico nelle sue commedie: non tanto una ricostruzione della messa in scena, ma un’interpretazione in chiave semiotica della creazione, diegetica e mimetica, dello spazio in cui si muove l’azione teatrale. Tramite una prospettiva aperta e comparata, il libro offre una nuova lettura di tutte le commedie superstiti, e una riconsiderazione complessiva e radicale del teatro di Aristofane: un teatro fondato interamente sullo scontro fra identità e poteri contrapposti, innescato dalla miccia formidabile dell’eroismo comico, capace di stravolgere, inventare e dominare.
«Studi Classici e Orientali» 65.2, 2019
A miscellany in honor of Guido Paduano, with contributions ranging from ancient Greek literature ... more A miscellany in honor of Guido Paduano, with contributions ranging from ancient Greek literature to melodrama, from Latin literature to classical reception, from modern literatures to literary theory and philosophy.
From the experience of the SNS Theatre Group, new original Italian translations of Sophocles' tra... more From the experience of the SNS Theatre Group, new original Italian translations of Sophocles' tragedies, specifically thought for the stage. In the first volume, Electra and Philoctetes.
Dall'esperienza del Gruppo Teatrale della Normale, nuove traduzioni italiane originali delle tragedie di Sofocle, specificamente pensate per la messa in scena. Nel primo volume, Elettra e Filottete.
Papers by Francesco Morosi
What is a Greek Source on the Early English Stage? Fifteen New Essays, 2024
This essay aims at reassessing Aristophanic presence in Ben Jonson’s «The
Staple of News» (first ... more This essay aims at reassessing Aristophanic presence in Ben Jonson’s «The
Staple of News» (first performed in 1626). Although single verbal references
to Aristophanic drama are scant in the play, it will be contended that both
the ideological posture and the dramatic technique of the English play are
strongly influenced by Jonson’s in-depth reading of Aristophanes. This will
also lead us to re-evaluate at least partially Jonson’s intertextual strategies.
La Musa incatenata Prigionia e arte dall’antichità all’età contemporanea, 2024
In 2019, a group of university students from the Scuola Normale (Pisa, Italy) was admitted to a t... more In 2019, a group of university students from the Scuola Normale (Pisa, Italy) was admitted to a theatre course held in an Italian jail and normally open only to inmates. Students and inmates worked together for some months to a production of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest". This paper tells their story.
Dioniso, 2024
Building on an insight by Kenneth Dover, this paper proposes a comparative reading of the finale ... more Building on an insight by Kenneth Dover, this paper proposes a comparative reading of the finale of Aeschylus’ Eumenides and that of Aristophanes’ Frogs: in both texts, a torch-lit procession accompanies a character (the Semnai in the tragedy, Aeschylus in the comedy) who must ensure the well-being of the city. In this performative, structural, dramaturgical and thematic similarity, we find Aristophanes’ inten- tion to revive not only Aeschylus as a character, but also Aeschylus as a playwright, espousing a qualifying point of his ideology, the call for the city harmony.
Soph. El. 1245-50, a passage from the recognition duet between Electra and Orestes, has so far st... more Soph. El. 1245-50, a passage from the recognition duet between Electra and Orestes, has so far steered clear of the editors\u2019 criticism. However, the passage presents a number of small and yet troublesome problems: there is a lacuna; the participle λησόμενον is syntactically obscure; the meaning of the verb ἐνέβαλες is not per- spicuous; the position of the phrase οἷον ἔφυ is strange. Our paper investigates all the problems mentioned above, trying to reassess the grammatical, syntactical, and linguistic status of the passage, and to find a solution to its main difficulties.
A Feast of Strange Opinions: Classical and Early Modern Paradoxes on the English Renaissance Stage, 2022
This essay aims at comparing and contrasting two instances of the paradox of poverty: the agon of... more This essay aims at comparing and contrasting two instances of the paradox of poverty: the agon of Aristophanes’ Wealth (the first explicit extant formulation of the paradox), and Thomas Randolph’s translation-adaptation of the scene in "Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery" (approx. 1625). By so doing, this essay will show the intellectual matrix of the paradoxical defence of poverty: in both scenes, the personification of Poverty is clearly represented as an intellectual. This relates to the intellectual nature of the paradox of poverty, and to its intellectual origin, which will be traced back to Socratic thinking.
Aevum Antiquum, 2022
The Pythia’s prologue in Aeschylus’ Eumenides serves an important function – since the action has... more The Pythia’s prologue in Aeschylus’ Eumenides serves an important function – since the action has just moved to Delphi, it must create its own space, and provide the spectators with a credible ‘verbal setting’. This paper wishes to show how Aeschylus achieves this poetic and dramatic aim. It will contend that Aeschylus uses topographical and archaeological data to represent the new space, and it will zero in on two parts of the Pythia’s monologue – the initial prayer to the Delphic gods, and the description of the Erinyes. By means of comparison with coeval lyric and dramatic passages, the paper aims at showing how archaeology can be used as a poetically effective strategy.
Maia, 2022
The description of the Erinyes given by the Pythia in the prologue of Aeschylus’ Eumenides is a f... more The description of the Erinyes given by the Pythia in the prologue of Aeschylus’ Eumenides is a fundamental dramaturgical moment in the trilogy: after appearing to Orestes alone in the finale of Choephori, the Furies are now visible – exactly in the same terms in which they were to Orestes – to other characters, too. However, the paradosis of lin. 54 is certainly corrupt. Which liquid should drip from the Erinyes’ eyes? This paper reviews Burges’ influential emendation, and puts forward a new hypothesis.
Programma di sala, 2022
Nota del traduttore di Edipo Re — 57° stagione al Teatro Greco di Siracusa
Fondazione INDA
Classical Quarterly, 2022
Eumenides 517-25 contains a centrepiece of Aeschylean ideology—the role of punishment and fear in... more Eumenides 517-25 contains a centrepiece of Aeschylean ideology—the role of punishment and fear in the ruling of the city. However, the text is vexed by serious issues at lines 522-5. This paper reassesses the main problems, reviews the most influential emendations, and puts forward a new hypothesis. It argues in favour of circumscribing the corruption, offering a new interpretation that permits retention of parts of the text that most editors have deemed impossible to restore.
Dioniso, 2020
Sex is a centerpiece of most Aristophanic comedies: the hero’s triumph is often rewarded, and rep... more Sex is a centerpiece of most Aristophanic comedies: the hero’s triumph is often rewarded, and represented, by sexual pleasure. However, sex in Aristophanic drama is a complex phaenomenon, involving desire, power, money, and some of the fundamental dynamics of the archaia as a genre. In Aristophanes’ plays, it is possible to draw in broad terms a distinction between sex as a narcissistic realization of individual desire, and sex as a tool in power plays and relationships. This paper investigates both these aspects of sex in Aristophanic comedy (from Acharnians to Lysistrata, from Ecclesiazusae to Wealth), in order to provide a new interpretive framework for sexual pleasure in Aristophanes.
Dioniso, 2020
What does interpreting Aristophanes today mean? What are the most fascinating challenges? And how... more What does interpreting Aristophanes today mean? What are the most fascinating challenges? And how has the scholarship worked around Aristophanes in the last decades?
Classical Philology, 2020
The agon of Aristophanes’ Wealth has puzzled scholars for decades, raising some major thematic is... more The agon of Aristophanes’ Wealth has puzzled scholars for decades, raising some major thematic issues: who wins the agon? Penia’s argumentation seems more rational and easy to be shared; but did Aristophanes really want his audience to sympathize with the antagonist rather than with Chremylus? The question has proven a conundrum for Aristophanic scholarship.
In my paper, I will take one aspect of the question into closer consideration – Penia’s representation: how is she portrayed? Is it a typically Aristophanic personification or can be some precise models be recognized? In my opinion, Aristophanes was consistently drawing from a quite common model in ancient comedy, philosophers: Penia looks, speaks, and acts as a philosopher – or rather, as the comic type of philosopher (with special reference to Socratic thinkers).
This observation can help reach some conclusions about the winner of the agon: Penia’s being in all respects a philosopher is what makes her argue in a rationalistic and more conclusive way; but it is also what makes her a negative character, preventing the audience from sympathizing with her reasons: since (comic) philosophers are usually portrayed as living destitute lives, Penia’s programme is intrinsically philosophical, and profoundly negative in a comic, and Aristophanic, context.
Moreover, an in-depth analysis of Penia’s vocabulary and argumentation also shows that her arguments are hardly unparalleled in 4th-century Greek literature. A close relation can be shown to exist between Penia’s arguments about wealth and poverty and those of Socrates in Plato’s Republic (especially as outlined in Books 4 and 5). It seems therefore possible to hypothesize that Wealth, quite as much as Ecclesiazusae, shows some relevant philosophical and textual similarities to the Republic.
«Interpretazioni. Studi in onore di Guido Paduano», 2019
As scholarship on Elizabethan theatre has widely recognized, Elizabethan drama depended heavily o... more As scholarship on Elizabethan theatre has widely recognized, Elizabethan drama depended heavily on words to create its own world: on a relatively bare stage, the only tool to have audiences visualize changes of settings was to describe them. Such an importance of words, of course, entails the possibility to gloss over whatever was not relevant for the poet: when the playwright did not need any specific description of a place or a time, it was sufficient not to mention it. Placelessness is a technique that Elizabethan dramatists used consciously.
Aristophanic drama works in a similar way: as it presupposes poor technical resources, it is a fundamentally anti-realistic genre, and it depends on words as much as Elizabethan theatre. This paper aims to show, through an analysis of Peace, how Aristophanes used placelessness to create meanings.
Antiquorum Philosophia, 2018
Scholarship has zeroed in on the portrait of Socrates and Socratism in Aristophanes’ Clouds, but ... more Scholarship has zeroed in on the portrait of Socrates and Socratism in Aristophanes’ Clouds, but has usually neglected the poetic creation of the Thinkery throughout the play. By studying the symbolic use of theatrical space (both mimetic and diegetic) along the horizontal and the vertical axes in the construction of the φροντιστήριον, this paper aims to show that, in featuring the Thinkery and Socrates, Aristophanes had a precise parallel in mind: Pythagorean schools.
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Books by Francesco Morosi
This book aims to address this issue with reference to an enlightening case study – meta-performance, a fundamental comic strategy that characterizes both authors and their corpora. Scenes of meta-performance frequently depict would-be poets, incompetent musicians, or treacherous intellectuals. But how do Aristophanes and Ben Jonson represent poetic, musical, and artistic performances within their own plays?
At the crossroads of philology, reception studies, and comparative studies, this book will make a significant contribution toward a substantial re-evaluation of Ben Jonson’s classical reading and dramatic strategies.
Questo volume si propone di fare il punto, in termini metodologici e nello specifico di singoli problemi, su alcuni degli elementi cruciali perl’interpretazione di Aristofane: l’eroe comico e la sua natura, l’impatto del desiderio sull’azione comica, il valore semiotico di spazio e tempo nella costruzione della drammaturgia, il peso della religione, della tragedia e del pensiero filosofico coevi nell’ideologia dell’autore.
Dall'esperienza del Gruppo Teatrale della Normale, nuove traduzioni italiane originali delle tragedie di Sofocle, specificamente pensate per la messa in scena. Nel primo volume, Elettra e Filottete.
Papers by Francesco Morosi
Staple of News» (first performed in 1626). Although single verbal references
to Aristophanic drama are scant in the play, it will be contended that both
the ideological posture and the dramatic technique of the English play are
strongly influenced by Jonson’s in-depth reading of Aristophanes. This will
also lead us to re-evaluate at least partially Jonson’s intertextual strategies.
In my paper, I will take one aspect of the question into closer consideration – Penia’s representation: how is she portrayed? Is it a typically Aristophanic personification or can be some precise models be recognized? In my opinion, Aristophanes was consistently drawing from a quite common model in ancient comedy, philosophers: Penia looks, speaks, and acts as a philosopher – or rather, as the comic type of philosopher (with special reference to Socratic thinkers).
This observation can help reach some conclusions about the winner of the agon: Penia’s being in all respects a philosopher is what makes her argue in a rationalistic and more conclusive way; but it is also what makes her a negative character, preventing the audience from sympathizing with her reasons: since (comic) philosophers are usually portrayed as living destitute lives, Penia’s programme is intrinsically philosophical, and profoundly negative in a comic, and Aristophanic, context.
Moreover, an in-depth analysis of Penia’s vocabulary and argumentation also shows that her arguments are hardly unparalleled in 4th-century Greek literature. A close relation can be shown to exist between Penia’s arguments about wealth and poverty and those of Socrates in Plato’s Republic (especially as outlined in Books 4 and 5). It seems therefore possible to hypothesize that Wealth, quite as much as Ecclesiazusae, shows some relevant philosophical and textual similarities to the Republic.
Aristophanic drama works in a similar way: as it presupposes poor technical resources, it is a fundamentally anti-realistic genre, and it depends on words as much as Elizabethan theatre. This paper aims to show, through an analysis of Peace, how Aristophanes used placelessness to create meanings.
This book aims to address this issue with reference to an enlightening case study – meta-performance, a fundamental comic strategy that characterizes both authors and their corpora. Scenes of meta-performance frequently depict would-be poets, incompetent musicians, or treacherous intellectuals. But how do Aristophanes and Ben Jonson represent poetic, musical, and artistic performances within their own plays?
At the crossroads of philology, reception studies, and comparative studies, this book will make a significant contribution toward a substantial re-evaluation of Ben Jonson’s classical reading and dramatic strategies.
Questo volume si propone di fare il punto, in termini metodologici e nello specifico di singoli problemi, su alcuni degli elementi cruciali perl’interpretazione di Aristofane: l’eroe comico e la sua natura, l’impatto del desiderio sull’azione comica, il valore semiotico di spazio e tempo nella costruzione della drammaturgia, il peso della religione, della tragedia e del pensiero filosofico coevi nell’ideologia dell’autore.
Dall'esperienza del Gruppo Teatrale della Normale, nuove traduzioni italiane originali delle tragedie di Sofocle, specificamente pensate per la messa in scena. Nel primo volume, Elettra e Filottete.
Staple of News» (first performed in 1626). Although single verbal references
to Aristophanic drama are scant in the play, it will be contended that both
the ideological posture and the dramatic technique of the English play are
strongly influenced by Jonson’s in-depth reading of Aristophanes. This will
also lead us to re-evaluate at least partially Jonson’s intertextual strategies.
In my paper, I will take one aspect of the question into closer consideration – Penia’s representation: how is she portrayed? Is it a typically Aristophanic personification or can be some precise models be recognized? In my opinion, Aristophanes was consistently drawing from a quite common model in ancient comedy, philosophers: Penia looks, speaks, and acts as a philosopher – or rather, as the comic type of philosopher (with special reference to Socratic thinkers).
This observation can help reach some conclusions about the winner of the agon: Penia’s being in all respects a philosopher is what makes her argue in a rationalistic and more conclusive way; but it is also what makes her a negative character, preventing the audience from sympathizing with her reasons: since (comic) philosophers are usually portrayed as living destitute lives, Penia’s programme is intrinsically philosophical, and profoundly negative in a comic, and Aristophanic, context.
Moreover, an in-depth analysis of Penia’s vocabulary and argumentation also shows that her arguments are hardly unparalleled in 4th-century Greek literature. A close relation can be shown to exist between Penia’s arguments about wealth and poverty and those of Socrates in Plato’s Republic (especially as outlined in Books 4 and 5). It seems therefore possible to hypothesize that Wealth, quite as much as Ecclesiazusae, shows some relevant philosophical and textual similarities to the Republic.
Aristophanic drama works in a similar way: as it presupposes poor technical resources, it is a fundamentally anti-realistic genre, and it depends on words as much as Elizabethan theatre. This paper aims to show, through an analysis of Peace, how Aristophanes used placelessness to create meanings.
The audience, however, have already heard Tiresias’ prophecy, and thus know that the σκῆπτρον will also be the staff that Oedipus will use once blind. By means of its polysemy, then, the same word is associated with the three crucial moments of Oedipus’ life as it is laid out throughout the play: the past, with the killing of Laius; the present, with his position of king; the future, with the atonement for his crimes. Although recurring only twice in the drama, σκῆπτρον is set at the crossroads of Oedipus’ life, and has therefore a remarkable significance for the whole meaning of the play. What is more, Sophocles seems to bear this association in mind when actually staging the ‘sequel’ of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus Coloneus. By playing again on the different meanings of σκῆπτρον (both the blind man’s walking-stick and his former sceptre), the poet revives the ambiguity he had already created in Oedipus Rex, and confirms the associations of the term with each stage of Oedipus’ life.
* To be published *
12-13 December 2016
Oxford University, APGRD
16th Annual Joint Postgraduate Symposium on Ancient Drama
Oxford - London 27-28 June 2016