Synopses & Reviews
Of the 1995 full-length edition: Aristophanes addicts unite This book is for us. It has everything that we always wanted to know about Birds and we were unable to find in one place.' Greek Gazette The commentary elucidates with an experts knowledge of syntax, meter, and artifacts.... The volume will remain authoritative for generations.' Religious Studies Review Birds is generally recognized as one of Aristophanes' masterpieces, for its imaginative plot (it is the source of the word Cloudcuckooland'), and its charming and original lyrics. This is an abridgement of Nan Dunbar's widely acclaimed edition of Birds published in 1995, which was the first comprehensive edition in any language. The abridged version retains all the material designed to help the less advanced student of Greek or the non-specialist to translate, understand, and enjoy the play. It retains the notes on staging, but the metrical, textual, and ornithological problems are dealt with more summarily, and purely illustrative parallels are omitted. The Introduction covers more concisely the same ground as that of the full-length edition, but omits the detailed discussions of the individual manuscripts and their interrelations. Text with facing translation, commentary and notes.
Synopsis
Text with facing translation, commentary and notes. (Aris and Phillips 1987)
Synopsis
Birds was produced at the City Dionysia in the spring of 414 BC. It differs from all the other fifth-century plays of Aristophanes that survive in having no strong and obvious connection with a topical question of public interest, whether political (like Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, Peace and Lysistrata), literary-theatrical (like Thesmophoriazusae and Frogs), or intellectual-educational (like Clouds). It has, indeed, in its own way, plenty of topical and satirical content: in particular, as the city of Cloudcuckooville begins to take shape, it proves in many ways to be a replica of Athens, and is soon visited by many of the less desirable elements of the Athenian population. But taking the play as a whole, satire is kept firmly subordinate to fantasy; and as fantasy Birds has no rival in what we possess of Greek literature, until we reach Lucian nearly six centuries later. Alan Sommerstein's celebrated edition, reprinted with revisions in 1991, presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, commentary and notes.