Comic Fragments: Transmission and Textual Criticism

Abstract

This chapter looks at the sources of Greek comic fragments and then formulates some observations and tentative rules of how one should deal with them when one tries to tease comic fragments out of their contexts. At first look, there does not seem to be much difference between the various sources of comic fragments, and in fact pretty much the same authors and works provide fragments from comic plays of all stages of the development of the genre. On closer inspection, however, those sources quite noticeably vary in frequency from one phase of comedy to another, thus reflecting how later epochs took quite different interests in those phases. To demonstrate this, the author looks at a few representative authors from Old, Middle, and New Comedy each and sees how they fared in later times respectively.Keywords: Greek comic fragments; New Comedy

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