Mario Tel - Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy

This book has been through a long journey, not unlike my own. It started in Italy with a nebulous, pseudo-Bloomian interest in parental bonds and literary affiliation throughout Greek drama. By the time of my trans-Atlantic passage, to Southern California, I envisioned a series of case studies on the metapoetics of fatherhood drawn from Aristophanes. When I began writing the book, I was serendipitously intrigued by the prominence of two similar pieces of clothing in Wasps and the second version of Clouds, both of them plays that concern father-son relationships and spring from a competitive setback. With the forensic attitude of a philologist, I took it upon myself to piece together things that seemed unconnected: not just father-son relationships but textiles and an ultimately canonical poets artistic failure. My original interest in poetic self-reflexivity had come to include aesthetics, materiality, and canonicity. I soon realized that the resolution of the puzzle I was investigating could occupy a whole book. Instead of collecting multiple case studies, I would apply my close readings to the reconstruction of a narrative that, though centered in two plays, stretches into their afterlife, with ramifications for Aristophanes authorial survival.

My journey would not have happened in the first place without the generous support and encouragement of Joseph Farrell, Donald Mastronarde, Glenn Most, and Seth Schein, with special thanks to Ralph Rosen, who warmly and selflessly shepherded me toward employment in American academia. Thanks are also due to my wonderful UCLA colleagues, who welcomed me and have provided a fertile intellectual environment for these past seven years, including Catherine Atherton, Ann Bergren, David Blank, Shane Butler, Sander Goldberg, Robert Gurval, Chris Johanson, Francesca Martelli, Kathryn Morgan, Sarah Morris, John Papadopoulos, Alex Purves, Amy Richlin, Giulia Sissa, and Brent Vine. They all, in various ways, have supported me and helped me bring this project to fruition.

The core argument in this book had its first public airing in a talk at Berkeley in April 2012. I thank my UC colleagues Mark Griffith, Leslie Kurke, and Donald Mastronarde for their warm reception and invaluable feedback, which gave me the strength to continue. Donald, to whom I owe a major debt of gratitude dating back to my first visit to Berkeley, as an undergraduate in 1999, has been a source of support throughout the completion of this book. He read the first chapter, offering insightful comments from which I benefited enormously. So did Karen Bassi, Lucia Prauscello, and Ralph Rosen. In particular, Karen helped me work through the theoretical implications of the argument, while Ralph gently yet firmly urged me to think big and to clarify structure and organization. Seth Schein and Kathryn Morgan both helped with the books abstract. Emily Gowers read the epilogue, improving form and substance with her distinctive wit and kindness. The participants in the June 2014 Cambridge conference Recontextualizing Occasion: Reperformance in Ancient Greece, organized by Anna Uhlig and Richard Hunter, lent an attentive and sympathetic ear to some of the contents of the book. I also want to thank Jim Porter for conversations through the years that, together with his writings, have deeply influenced my thinking.

Deepest thanks go to Alex Purves for her advice and support, and the inspiration she provides. Alex read the manuscript twice, showing enthusiasm for the projecteven when I had none leftand changed my perspective on a number of key issues. She made me realize that ultimately my project was about the affect of genre and prodded me to read in affect theory and the new materialism. I am grateful for her inexhaustibly stimulating presence, which has profoundly enriched me as a scholar.

At the University of Chicago Press I found in Susan Bielstein the ideal editor: visionary, perceptive, and generousan authors dream. James Whitman Toftness was an unrivaled example of efficiency, kindness, and responsiveness. Thanks are also due to Susan Karani, my copy editor, for her patience and attention.

I am grateful for the insights of my two no-longer-anonymous readers. Charles Platter, whose work on Aristophanes has greatly informed my own, provided much-needed encouragement and innumerable astute observations. Melissa Mueller offered essential guidance and contributed to making the manuscript clearer, tighter, and stronger. Her groundbreaking work on objects in tragedy infuses me with energy and excitement. I am also grateful to Leslie Kurke for reading the manuscript at a late stage and promptly supplying fantastic comments, additions, and corrections with characteristic generosity and acuity. Her extraordinary example of adventurous and rigorous scholarship continually inspires me.

This book would have never seen the light of day without the unceasing, painstaking help of Alex Press, my life partner. Alex taught me how to write in English, reinforcing for me the value of clear prose, free from flowery embellishments and jargon. He never tired of correcting sentences, streamlining paragraphs, and reconceptualizing whole pages. He read the manuscript multiple times, improving it at every round in wonderful ways. He was also a constant intellectual interlocutor, talking me through ideas and helping me overcome doubts and hesitations with patience and commitment. This book owes to him much more than can be measured in words. The dedication to him is a minimal compensation for the Heraclean efforts he has put into this project.

Santa Monica, 2015