Author: SEGAL, E.,
Title: Roman Laughter. The Comedy of Plautus.
Description: Oxford University Press, NewYork/Oxford, 1968. 229p. Cloth wrps. Cover a bit stained. With pencil markings and annotations from WGA. 'Segal's stated intention in this, the first English book exclusively on Plautus, is to set the playwright in relation to contemporary Roman culture and to the comic tradition (...). The theme is that 'the holiday-occasion and the festival are parallel manifestations of the same pattern of culture', and that 'the festive feeling, as Freud describes it, is the liberty to do what as a rule is prohibited', so that Plautine comedy, being essentially part of a holiday-occasion, may be regarded as a 'saturnalian overthrow of the Roman value-system.' (A.S. GRATWICK in The Classical Review (New Series), 1970, p.333). From the library of the late Professor W. Geoffrey Arnott.

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