“When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic Scholia

While the Aristophanic scholia do not normally pay much attention to the mechanisms of verbal humour, there are numerous annotations pointing out jokes “against expectation”. The term typically used for this common phenomenon is παρ᾿ ὑπόνοιαν rather than παρὰ προσδοκίαν, although the latter also occ...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Willi, A
Other Authors: Apostolakis, K
Format: Book section
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2024
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author Willi, A
author2 Apostolakis, K
author_facet Apostolakis, K
Willi, A
author_sort Willi, A
collection OXFORD
description While the Aristophanic scholia do not normally pay much attention to the mechanisms of verbal humour, there are numerous annotations pointing out jokes “against expectation”. The term typically used for this common phenomenon is παρ᾿ ὑπόνοιαν rather than παρὰ προσδοκίαν, although the latter also occurs a few times, probably under the influence of rhetorical teaching. The scholiasts’ general awareness of the feature, and their insistence on it, does not, however, go hand in hand with any in-depth analysis; much rather, παρ᾿ ὑπόνοιαν risks being used as a cover-all label for a variety of comic devices and without much consideration being given to its contextual appropriateness. Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest that explanations by means of παρ᾿ ὑπόνοιαν could be a last resort when difficult passages could not be explained in a more “sophisticated” manner.
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spelling oxford-uuid:8263c74d-1234-43b4-8d67-5b175e0434d62024-06-03T10:32:49Z“When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic ScholiaBook sectionhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_1843uuid:8263c74d-1234-43b4-8d67-5b175e0434d6EnglishSymplectic ElementsDe Gruyter2024Willi, AApostolakis, KKonstantakos, IMWhile the Aristophanic scholia do not normally pay much attention to the mechanisms of verbal humour, there are numerous annotations pointing out jokes “against expectation”. The term typically used for this common phenomenon is παρ᾿ ὑπόνοιαν rather than παρὰ προσδοκίαν, although the latter also occurs a few times, probably under the influence of rhetorical teaching. The scholiasts’ general awareness of the feature, and their insistence on it, does not, however, go hand in hand with any in-depth analysis; much rather, παρ᾿ ὑπόνοιαν risks being used as a cover-all label for a variety of comic devices and without much consideration being given to its contextual appropriateness. Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest that explanations by means of παρ᾿ ὑπόνοιαν could be a last resort when difficult passages could not be explained in a more “sophisticated” manner.
spellingShingle Willi, A
“When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic Scholia
title “When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic Scholia
title_full “When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic Scholia
title_fullStr “When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic Scholia
title_full_unstemmed “When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic Scholia
title_short “When he should have said...” The treatment of humour παρ’ ὑπόνοιαν in the Aristophanic Scholia
title_sort when he should have said the treatment of humour παρ ὑπόνοιαν in the aristophanic scholia
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