Plautus and Terence: Five Comedies / Edition 1

by Deena Berg, Douglass Parker, Terence

Overview

This is a book worthy of high praise. . . . All versions are exceedingly witty and versatile, in verse that ripples from one’s lips, pulling all the punches of Plautus, the knockabout king of farce, and proving that the more polished Terence can be just as funny. Accuracy to the original has been thoroughly respected, but look at the humour in rendering Diphilius’ play called Synapothnescontes as Three’s a Shroud. . . . Students in schools and colleges will benefit from short introductions to each play, to Roman stage conventions, to different types of Greek and Roman comedy, and there is a note on staging, with a diagram illustrating a typical Roman stage and further diagrams of the basic set for each play. The translators have paid more attention to stage directions than is usually given in translations, because they aim to show how these plays worked. This is a book to be used and enjoyed. --Raymond J. Clark, The Classical Outlook

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780872203624
Publisher:	Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/01/1999
Series:	Hpc Classics Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Part one: General topics in the philosophy of science

     1. Scientific Explanation

     2. The Confirmation of Scientific Hypotheses

     3. Realism and the Nature of Theories

     4. Scientific Change: Perspectives and Proposals
 

 Part two: Philosophy of the physical sciences

     5. Philosophy of Space and Time

     6. Determinism in the Physical Sciences
 

Part three: Philosophy of biology and medicine

     7. Philosophy of Biology

     8. Philosophy of Medicine

 
Part four: Philosophy of behavioral and social sciences

     9. Philosophy of Psychology

   10. Android Epistemology: Computation, Artificial Intelligence, and the Philosophy of Science

   11. Philosophy of the Social Sciences

 
Bibliography.

Index.

What People are Saying About This

John Wright

Deena Berg and Douglass Parker's 'Plautus & Terence: Five Comedies' is a fascinating postmodernist rendition of some of the most postmodernist - metatheatrical, self-referential, sophisticated, stylized - literature classical antiquity has to offer. The sparkling and eminently performable translations are a hard act to precede, but the translator's delightful introductions are a worthy match for their subjects . . . . Highly recommended.

Editorial Reviews

Deena Berg and Douglass Parker's Plautus & Terence: Five Comedies is a fascinating postmodernist rendition of some of the most postmodernist - metatheatrical, self-referential, sophisticated, stylized - literature classical antiquity has to offer. The sparkling and eminently performable translations are a hard act to precede, but the translator's delightful introductions are a worthy match for their subjects . . . . Highly recommended. -Northwestern University

John Wright

These witty, fast-moving translations of Roman comedy capture the spirit and sense of their originals in a mixture of Roman and contemporary cultural idiom. Berg's Terence is, as Quintillian put it, 'elegantissima'; Parker's jazzy 'cantica' in the 'Bacchides' are hilarious, and his pseudo-Plautine reconstruction of the missing first act is an imitative tour de force. - Indiana University

Eleanor W. Leach

This splendid sampling of Roman comedy is particularly welcome because Parker and Berg have combined the best known (and perhaps finest) comedies of Plautus and Terence (The Brothers Menaechmus, here 'Double Bind,' and Miles Gloriosus, here 'Major Blowhard,' and Adelphoe, 'The Brothers') with two rarer and rather special comedies: 'The Wild Wild Women,' Plautus' exuberant Bacchides, and 'The Mother-in-Law' (Hecyra), perhaps Terence's most modern comedy, important as evidence from ancient comedy for the evolution of the sentimental or psychological drama of everyday life. The translators are to be congratulated on their choices and their truly up-to-date versions; Parker is a veteran whose punning wit and swashbuckling idiom in his very actable Plautus scripts contrast nicely with the simple elegance of Berg's Terence. -Princeton University

Elaine Fantham

These five new translations . . . take to its logical, lively conclusion the long-held but oft-ignored reality that Plautus and Terence were writers for the stage. These versions have verve: playability, liveliness, accessibility, unlike anything on library shelves today. Of modern-day attempts at Plautus-inspired music, for example, only Stephen Sondheim has excelled the inspired zaniness of Douglass Parker’s lyrics. There is much virtue to be measured here. . . . After reading these plays we might spend considerable thought on the possibility that conservative translations in the style of Barsby are less authentic--if such a thing can be measured--than those of Berg and Parker. . . . This is a deceptively important book, meriting a wide, attentive readership. . . . [Berg and Parker's] theater-friendly versions offer a vision of the future of Roman comedy, both scholarly and popular. The profession will be well repaid to take an appreciative look. --David Frauenfelder, North Carolina State University


Deena Berg and Douglass Parker’s Plautus & Terence: Five Comedies is a fascinating postmodernist rendition of some of the most postmodernist--metatheatrical, self-referential, sophisticated, stylized--literature classical antiquity has to offer. The sparkling and eminently performable translations are a hard act to precede, but the translator’s delightful introductions are a worthy match for their subjects. . . . Highly recommended. --John Wright, Northwestern University


This splendid sampling of Roman comedy is particularly welcome because Parker and Berg have combined the best known (and perhaps finest) comedies of Plautus and Terence (The Brothers Menaechmus, here 'Double Bind,' and Miles Gloriosus, here 'Major Blowhard,' and Adelphoe, 'The Brothers') with two rarer and rather special comedies: 'The Wild Wild Women,' Plautus' exuberant Bacchides, and 'The Mother-in-Law' (Hecyra), perhaps Terence's most modern comedy, important as evidence from ancient comedy for the evolution of the sentimental or psychological drama of everyday life. The translators are to be congratulated on their choices and their truly up-to-date versions; Parker is a veteran whose punning wit and swashbuckling idiom in his very actable Plautus scripts contrast nicely with the simple elegance of Berg's Terence."
     —Elaine Fantham, Princeton University

From the Publisher