8Μάγειρος ποιητής: Language and Character in Antiphanes

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the riddling and dithyrambic language of the cook in Middle Comedy. It shows that Aristophanic paratragedy is not simply turned into paradithyramb. As a genre, dithyramb has no importance for comedy, so that it becomes difficult to speak of parody or even intertextuality. It is only the verbal art of dithyramb which is transferred into comedy and becomes a new ‘special effect’. Whereas in Old Comedy virtually every character can have a paratragic line or two, in Middle Comedy dithyrambic style becomes a prerogative of one particular type of speaker: cooks and servants. By speaking in riddles, the cook appropriates a verbal genre that ‘belongs’ to the upper classes who meet at symposia, and by using a dithyrambic medium in the formulation of these riddles he gives his social pretension or λαζονεία expression also on a linguistic level.

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