GREEK LITERATURE & CULTURE
Greek Literature and the Tragic Vision
Ian Johnston explores how Greek ideas of justice, divine power, and human freedom shaped the heroic and tragic vision of ancient Greek literature.
Read resource →Classical Reference Library
Lectures
Lectures offering accessible explorations of major works, authors, ideas, and intellectual traditions.
Aristophanes
GREEK COMEDY
On Aristophanes’s The Birds
Ian Johnston examines Aristophanes’s The Birds as a satire of Athenian ambition and imperialism, tracing how Pisthetairos’s search for escape and freedom gradually becomes a pursuit of power, domination, and control.
Read resource →GREEK COMEDY
On Satire in Aristophanes’s Clouds
Ian Johnston examines how Aristophanes uses satire in The Clouds, tracing the play’s shifting targets from Socrates and the Thinkery to Strepsiades and, ultimately, the Athenian audience itself. He explores the social function of laughter, the manipulation of language, and the increasingly troubling implications of the play’s comic attack.
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