Oxford University Press, 1992. Hardcover. Light blue cloth covered hardcover with red lettering to spine. Very good dust jacket with toning around the top of the cover. Dust jacket was placed in a clear protective sleeve after photo was taken. 8vo. (6.38 x 0.88 x 9.5 inches) One page has marginalia from the late Professor Peter Green. Rest of the text is clean and free of marks or underlining. Includes an appendix, notes, bibliography, index of passages and a subject index. 216 pp.


Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. Very good / Very good. Item #202328
ISBN: 9780195070170

This intelligent and thought-provoking reading of Aristophanes' Clouds focuses on logos, or the power of argument, and on the self-awareness of our second Clouds as a comedy of logos directed toward an audience made resistant by devotion to the body. Integrating the comical and philosophical agendas of the play and balancing rhetoric with comedy, O'Regan explores the Greek view of skillful speech as a kind of force and demonstrates the dramatic and thematic unity with which the Clouds challenges this conception.
Discussing the differences between the play's first and second versions, O'Regan shows how the Clouds' comedy and its self-defined "history" tell the same story: onstage and off, speech is subordinate to human nature and desire.
O'Regan's argument conveys much insight into fifth-century thought and the play's workings as well as placing the Clouds in the institutional and generic contexts of Athenian drama. Analyzing the role of the audience in the dynamic of the play and the impact of its comedy on the spectators, she argues that the Clouds is civic education, awakening personal reflection and contributing to the contemporary debate about democracy, language, and the city.

Price: $54.95