Crítica da comédia As Vespas, de Aristófanes, ao tribunal popular ateniense

Abstract

This research of Master in Comparative Literature has for theme The portrait of judiciary institutions Athenian in comedy The Wasps, of Aristophanes. The approach of corruption in the judiciary institutions of the fifth century a. C., in The Wasps, highlight the artistic and political concerns of Aristophanes by preserving the values and integrity of democratic institutions of Athens. From the observation that proceeded Aristophanes in defense of the polis, the goal of this research is to analyze of the comedy The Wasps, centered on its principal: the prologue, the parodo, the agon, the parabasis, episodic scenes, the exodus and secondaries aspects: the educational, the political, the legal and the cultural. Aristophanes criticism came at a time when the Athenian society lived the splendor of democracy, reforms resulting from socio-political-economic Dracon, Solon, Cleisthenes and Pericles. In contrary pole of Athenian democracy, the politician and demagogue Cleon live, in the caricature comic, like a tyrant or an agent of divine king pre-classical Greece, which was the absolute master in society. Aristophanes covers all these aspects of Athenian life in two basic parts comedy: the first, going from verse 1 to verse 1010, relates to the conduct of manic of Filocleon (‘Which loves Cleon’) by courts, and the attempt of his son, Bdelicleon (‘Which hates Cleon’), to reeducating him; and the second, going from verse 1010 to verse 1535, concerned the social reintegration of Filocleão in Athenian life. Both parties of comedy are devoted, therefore, not only to criticize the conduct personal and functional of Filocleon, but invite the Athenian society to preserve its institutions or the functions of democratic power: the People's Assembly, the Council of Five Hundred and the Courts.