Emotions in Antiquity: Indignation and Envy in Aristotle and Aristophanes

Keywords:

indignation, envy, Aristotle, Aristophanes, emotions

Abstract

The study of emotions in Antiquity has burst in the last decades. In its development, the Aristotelian systematization of affections (πάθη) (“Book II” of his Rhetoric) has received special attention. In this context, it has been noticed that the emotion of ‘indignation’, as it is defined by the Stagirite (a painful feeling produced by the perception of undeserved prosperity, Rhetoric 1387a8-9) would not have been named by the Greeks as he did it (τὸ νεμεσᾶν). The objection is founded, above all, on the testimonies of forensic speeches (4th century BC). Our proposal incorporates the testimony of Aristophanic comedy into the discussion, since indignation has been considered by many (Cooper, Golden, rosenbloom, among others) the typical emotion of comedy.

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Author Biography

Claudia N. Fernández, Conicet/ Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Doctora en Letras (Universidad Nacional de La Plata), Directora del Centro de Estudios Helénicos (UNLP), Profesora del Área de Griego e Investigadora CONICET. Autora de Plutos: La Riqueza de los Sentidos (2002) y coeditora de Tradición y traducción clásicas en América Latina (2012), Agón: Competencia y Cooperación, de la Antigua Grecia a la Actualidad (2015), Imaginarios de la integración y marginalidad en el drama ático (2016), [Una] nueva visión de la cultura griega antigua (2018) Democracia, pasión de multitudes. Política, comedia y emociones en la Atenas Clásica (2019). Cartografías del yo en el mundo antiguo. Estrategias de su textualización (2021). Dirige actualmente el PIP “Palabras, cuerpos, objetos: soportes discursivos y materiales de las emociones en la comedia griega”, y es miembro del Proyecto LOGOS (BBVA) “Pensar las emociones en la Atenas democrática: diálogo entre la comedia y la filosofía”.

Published

2021-05-18