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In the
theatre of ancient GreeceThe theatre of Ancient Greece, or ancient Greek drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was...
,
alazôn is one of three stock characters in
comedyAncient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece . Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy...
. He is the opponent of the
eirônIn the theatre of ancient Greece, the eirôn was one of three stock characters in comedy. The eirôn usually succeeds in bringing his braggart opponent down by making himself seem like less than he actually was.-History:...
. The
alazôn is an
impostorAn impostor or imposter is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but just as often for purposes of espionage or law enforcement....
that sees himself as greater than he actually is. The
senex iratusThe senex iratus or heavy father figure is a comic archetype character who belongs to the alazon or impostor group in theater, manifesting himself through his rages and threats, his obsessions and his gullibility....
(the heavy father) and the
miles gloriosusMiles Gloriosus is a stock character of a boastful soldier from the comic theatre of ancient Rome, and variations on this character have appeared in drama and fiction ever since. The character derives from the alazôn or "braggart" of the Greek Old Comedy...
(the boasting soldier) are two types of
alazôn.
Sources
- Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801481543.
- Frye, Northrop. 1957. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. London: Penguin, 1990. ISBN 0-14-012480-2.
- Janko, Richard, trans. 1987. Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets. By Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
. Cambridge: Hackett. ISBN 0-87220-033-7.
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