Um gole para Dioniso: sexo e subversão em Tesmoforiantes de Aristófanes

Abstract

Among the many gods of the Greek pantheon, Dionysus is the most complex and subversive deity, generally represented in an ambiguous or even paradoxical way: at the same time man and woman, god and mortal, beautiful and ugly. His connection with the theatre is established through these multiple facets, which are expressed especially in ancient comedy, a subversive genre by nature. This work aims to investigate the Dionysus’ influence on the creation of Aristophanes' comic theatre considering as a basis the play Thesmophoriazusae (411 BC), by observing the relation between men and women in the the metatheatrical game. In addition to Thesmophoriazusae, two other plays will be investigated in parallel: Lysistrata (411 BC) and Ecclesiazusae (392 BC), works in which female characters occupy a prominent role. Our work is organized as follows: in the first part we shall make some considerations about the myth and ritual of Dionysus building on the writings of Vernant (2009), Brandão (2008), Detienne (2003), Otto (2001), Jaeger (1994), e Grimal (1992), by observing Dionsysus’ representation in epic, tragedy and comedy. Then we shall analyze in the tragedy some female figures that are important for the comedy in order to understand how the relation between the masculine and the feminine is constituted. Finally, in the third part, we shall explore the interpretive possibilities of Thesmophoriazusae and the influence of the multiple faces of Dionysus in its structure, compared to the other two Aristophanes’ female plays in which the genders subversion appears as a fundamental element.