Trygoidía: la concepción trágica de Nubes de Aristófanes

Abstract

From the ideas on poetry expressed by Aristophanes himself lengthwise of his production, according to which he utilizes new forms besides the tópoi proper of the comedy, and he looks for not only delectare but also prodesse, in view of a “wise, ingenious” and “clever, skilful” public, we restate here the poetic conception of Clouds, postulating that it is not a tragicomedy or a hybrid, but, because of its components, its heroes, its resorts and attitudes, Aristophanes exposes it as example of trugw7día, that is to say, an example of a tragedy in disguise of comedy, uniting the two masks of the theatre, in order to detach that his work is not a mere amusement but it deals a serious and outstanding subject by means of jokes, a subject that is worthy of reflection; with this work, he made something different, to demonstrate the civic and social weight of the comic genre conceived in this manner, and to detach at once the independence and the proper value of the comedy as the reverse of the tragedy.