Congratulations to Professor Brown on the publication of his first book: Menander and the Birth of Domestic Drama
Congratulations to Professor Brown on the publication of his first book Menander and the Birth of Domestic Drama (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024)!
The book treats the work of the fourth-century BCE Greek dramatist Menander. Though few of his works survive today, he was known far and wide throughout antiquity. He was one of the first to set his dramas in the common household, rather than the mythic world of gods and heroes, and is now recognized as one of the pioneering figures of ancient Greek “New Comedy.”
Professor Brown’s book argues that the design of the Greek stage was such that the interiors of houses were never shown. This posed difficulties for a playwright interested in staging the domestic lives of ordinary people. In his book, Professor Brown dissects how Menander responded to this challenge. As he demonstrates, Menander successfully conjured offstage action and even characters in the audiences’ imaginations. These offstage universes, Brown argues, are fundamental to understanding Menander’s dramaturgy and its reception in later centuries. Menander’s offstage methods and the new type of play (domestic drama) that he inaugurated directly influenced Western theater into the early modern period—and the impact of his innovations can still be seen indirectly today.
