On The Athenian Democracy In The Context Of The Old Comedy

Athens'democratic era is a special historical period, and creates brilliant Greek civilization. Some constituent elements of modern democratic society can be traced to ancient Greek, such as citizens, intellectuals, public space, public sounds and so on. In the Athens'golden age, ancient comedy which focuses on criticizing reality and saving the city-states, have prosperously developed. Aristophanes,the most famous comic poet is thought as one of the greatest poets in the past. He lives in the Peloponnesian War period of ancient Greek and writes forty-four comic plays. Only eleven plays come down, including Cloud,Bird,Knights,Akharnians. Aristophanes is named as the father of the European comedy, and he establishes the tradition of using comic form to express serious theme in the western literature.The paper focuses on newly positioning the ancient comedy by the status of ancient Greek's polity, law and philosophy before 5th century B.C., which is under the background of social environments. Synchronously, it discusses the activities of the ancient comedy during the theory of the social public space, and proving its suspicious function for the city-state's ideology with the comic contents of Aristophanes's plays. The paper is formed of four chapters:Chapter One: Studies for Athens'democratic political institutionBriefly describing the development of Athens'democratic polity and macroscopically discussing ancient comedy's survival background, which is the point to understand the social nature of ancient comedy.Chapter Two: Citizens and intellectuals Defining the social identity of ancient comic poets, typically Aristophanes, and discussing the relationship of its creation and double identities (Citizens and intellectuals).Chapter Three: Public space Guiding the concept of public space from the analysis of ancient comedy's performance situation, which is the social environment for ancient comedy.Chapter Four: Public sounds Public sounds are the essential character, the result of mutual compromise between the comic poets and the audience, and the suspicion and criticism of existing institution in the process of the system, whose essence is the battle of poets'wisdom and democratic polity.