Rhetoric, Comedy, and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes' Clouds

Download or read book Rhetoric, Comedy, and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes' Clouds written by Daphne Elizabeth O'Regan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an intelligent and unusually thought-provoking reading of Aristophanes' Clouds. O'Regan focuses on logos, or the power of argument, and its effects, and on the self-awareness of the second Clouds as a comedy of logos directed toward an audience made resistant by devotion to the body. Within and without the play, logos meets defeat when confronted with human nature and desire. The argument conveys much insight into fifth-century thought and the play's workings, the more so because it balances rhetoric with comedy, and reminds the reader that this is a comic logos--explored in the comic mode, and connected with the intentions and vicissitudes of the first and second Clouds.