Comedy and Vase-Painting

AbstractThe first chapter presents the main sources on which the study of the comic body in this book is based, namely the (mainly fragmentary) texts of Old and Middle Comedy as well as the comic vases (earlier called ‘phlyax vases’). It takes up the debates raised over recent decades by these bodies of material and their relation to each other. The links between Attic comedy and comic vase-paintings from southern Italy and Sicily are discussed according to the contexts of production and use of the vases, both Greek or non-Greek, so as to place the investigation of the staging and representation of the body in Greek comedy in the Classical period on a solid scientific basis. The chapter also examines the methodological challenges of a text–image study, which aims to shed light on the history of the comic genre and performances.