The Feminine Body and the Grotesque Laughter in Aristophanes’Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria, and Assemblywomen
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Wu, Yi-Ping
Abstract
The range of this thesis focuses on three plays written by Aristophanes which related with women: Lysistrata, Thesmophoria, and Assemblywomen. The substance of these texts all has correlation because their topics all enclose with one subject: women. No matter in aspects of language or personality or impersonation, in a word, female is the basic core of these texts. The most important of all is that the female body becomes the territory for male and female to discuss and practice the sex issue. The thesis tries to use Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory and the sexual arguments of post-feminists to analyze deeply into the complications and slightness of these plays.
In the second chapter of the thesis, I debate about the conceptions of the Carnival Theory and Feminism associated with feminine body and grotesque laughter separately in the second section and the third section. Finally, I concentrate on comparing the correspondence and contradiction and the gap which can be imagined and applied between the two theories.
In the third and fourth and fifth chapters of this thesis, I utilize the two theories to interpret and anatomize the three plays. In Lysistrata, Aristophanes is limited to the scope of ideology of monopolistic masculinity. The women in the text v are virtually the tools to consolidate the masculine authority. In addition, on account of the single and absolute ideology of the text, it causes the weakness and feebleness of the Dionysian laughter in the work. However, Aristophanes uses lots of reverse and transgressing conditions to build the foundation of femininity and grotesque in Thesmophoria. Applying the saturnalian principles such as the transgression of genres, the production of sexuality and the combination between body and language provides the release and rebirth of body and laugh in the play. Aristophanes furnishes us with the unlimited possibility of feminine power and the animating practice of grotesque laughter by the dramatic writing of ideal Utopia in Assemblywomen. By introspection the textual concept of the three works, we can see clearly a new and special path that is a more and more optimistic way leading to feminine grotesque to interpret these plays.
Subjects
feminism
carnival
Bakhtin
Cixous
Irigaray
Kristeva
SDGs
Type
thesis
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