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Lysistrata
Lysistrata | Aristophanes, Sarah Ruden
This rollicking new translation of Aristophanes' comic masterpiece is rendered in blank verse for dialogue and in lyric meters and free verse for the songs. Appended commentary essays--on Athenian democracy, ancient Greek warfare, Athenian women, and Greek Comedy--offer lively and informative discussions not only of Aristophanes, but of the broader fifth-century social, political, and cultural context as well.
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batsy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Pickpick

When you start an Aristophanes play, you have to strap yourself in for a wild ride. Lysistrata is perhaps his most famous comedy; the one known as the "sex strike" play, where the clever Athenian lady Lysistrata, with the support of the the brawny Spartan lady Lampito, convince the women to withhold sex in order to make the men stop fighting & end the Peloponnesian War. Hijinks & phallic jokes ensue. Funnier than I remembered.

batsy The older I get, the more I enjoy the bad dad jokes 🙃 2y
PurpleyPumpkin I haven‘t read this since my university days! And that was a long time ago. 😅 I should read it again without the stress of essays and tests! 2y
batsy @PurpleyPumpkin Yes! It's more relaxing to re-visit it now without the pressure. Plus, you can bail if it's not your thing 🙂 2y
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Cathythoughts Great cover and picture 👌🏻 2y
batsy @Cathythoughts Love a Penguin edition 🤍 2y
BiblioLitten I need to read Lysistrata again😃 2y
batsy @BiblioLitten It's great fun to revisit the classics years later, older and wiser 😉 2y
AvidReader25 I saw this as a play once and it was so fun! 2y
batsy @AvidReader25 I imagine it would be! 😁 2y
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Argon
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
Pickpick

Overall, I found this pretty enjoyable and funny. But the misogyny of the ancient Athenians is pretty clear in some of the lines. Nowadays, the play is often performed as a feminist piece, but originally it was playing on how incapable women were thought to be by Athenian men - a world where women exhibit such agency and control was so impossible it was funny. That bit isn‘t funny today, but the other jokes still hold up 😆
6.5/10

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Rehesina
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
Pickpick

This was super fun to read! I read this on Serial Reader and assumed I would take some time gong through the different serials. That didn't happen and I read this in one sitting.

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Libby1
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Pickpick

An Ancient Greek play that is a strong contender for one of the funniest, raunchiest things I‘ve ever read.

To end an endless war, the women of Athens and Sparta band together in the decision to refuse sex until the war is ended.

Thank you for the chance to read this, @SerialReader . I loved it!

(Illustration from Google.)

Bookzombie I think I might read this for #Booked2019 . I read a YA a while back that was a retelling or used a similar premise. 5y
batsy I loved it too! So brilliant. 5y
Revenge4bess What was the YA that you read? 4y
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Libby1 Hi, @Saavylibrarian . @Bookzombie read the YA based on this play. She won‘t see the comment unless you use an @ before her name. 😊 4y
Bookzombie @Saavylibrarian Hi! This is the book. 🙂 4y
Bookzombie @Libby1 Thanks for tagging me. 💗 4y
Libby1 Any time, @Bookzombie 😊 . 4y
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TheatreSpaz
Lysistrata | Aristophanes

Another play I read for my college acting class, I realized why my 10th grade English teacher didn't have us read it all those years ago and instead told us about it: IT'S FLIPPING DIRTY! Probably one of the raunchiest things I've ever read. I did really like it though the ancient Greeks views on women were appalling and that does come through in the writing toward the beginning.

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Lindy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Leaving soon to see Lysistrata performed at Bard on the Beach tonight. I‘m feeling excited. 😊

minkyb Oh what fun! 6y
43 likes1 comment
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Lindy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Pickpick

Not the tagged book, but Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophane‘s Provocative Comedy, edited by David Stuttard. Informative and academic; I‘m pleased to have read it. I was led to this book from the bibliography in Mary Beard‘s Women & Power: A Manifesto. I was able to get it via interlibrary loan, all the way from Newfoundland (6,000 km from Edmonton). #Litsyloveslibraries!

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Lindy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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I‘m going to see two plays at Bard on the Beach in Vancouver at the end of July: Lysistrata and Timon of Athens. I didn‘t realize that there was a connection between the two until I read Lysistrata (in the modern adaptation by David Stuttard, above). I double-checked a standard translation online and there, too, found Timon “the rough-hewn fellow” who shuns everyone. It makes sense that Shakespeare would have read Aristophanes.

saresmoore Neat connection! 6y
Lindy @saresmoore Apparently Shakespeare decided to write the backstory explaining how Timon became a misanthropic hermit. It‘s fun to have made this discovery on my own, no matter how many other readers have made the same connection. 😊 6y
Lcsmcat Cool! 6y
MayJasper Good for you. News to me. I like - the vagrant who wasn't fragrant 😊 6y
44 likes4 comments
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Lindy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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It‘s a good thing I brought my own book over to my friend‘s house where I‘m looking after her cats while she‘s away. Meat scientists have strange reading material. Front page story on the Western Producer: “Huge grain carryout expected.” (?!)

LeahBergen 😆😆 6y
AlaMich Meat scientists? 🤔 6y
Lindy @AlaMich @LeahBergen Yes, a professor of “carcass and meat science” according to her university business card. I teased her about the word ‘carcass‘ and she put me in my place by telling me she doesn‘t do “processed meats.” 6y
AlaMich @Lindy 😂 6y
LeahBergen Oh my. 😂😂 6y
39 likes5 comments
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Lindy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Scholars often point to the passage in Pericle‘s funeral oration, delivered in honour of the first Peloponnesian War dead in 431 BC, in which he tells the women who have lost men to bear up and not to make a fuss, since ‘the greatest glory of a woman is to be mentioned as little as possible.‘
-Edith Hall, The Many Faces of Lysistrata, in the essay collection Looking at Lysistrata.

DivineDiana Say what! 😳 6y
Lindy @DivineDiana I remember listening to an interview with the author Annabel Lyon, after she wrote a novel set in Ancient Greece. She was asked what she would have liked to say to Aristotle, if she had lived in his time. She said Aristotle would never have paid any attention to her, because she‘s a woman. 6y
DivineDiana Quite shocking to hear that. 🙁 6y
33 likes3 comments
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Lindy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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“Then card the wool into the work-basket of union and concord, mixing in everyone; and all the immigrants, and any foreigner who‘s friendly to you, and anyone in debt to the treasury, they should be mixed in as well. And yes [...] take the human flock from all of them, bring them together here and join them into one, and then make a great ball of wool, and from that weave a warm cloak for the people to wear.”
#knittersofLitsy: fibre arts metaphor!

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Lindy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Lots of interesting stuff in ‘Looking at Lysistrata,‘ a collection of essays that‘s not in the Litsy database. 3 examples:
🏺The “phalli of comedy normally droop,” but they remain erect in this play.
🏺The main character was likely modelled on a real woman, Lysimache, who was the priestess of Athena at the time the play was first performed.
🏺Referring to a respectable woman by name in public was “a contravention of normal Athenian etiquette.”

Graywacke Ooh! I need to look this one up 6y
Lindy @Graywacke I‘m going to a see a production of Lysistrata in Vancouver at the end of July, so I‘m studying up. 🤓 6y
Graywacke @Lindy sounds fun! Should be a blast in performance. (My library has this book. Requested. 🙂) 6y
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Lindy @Graywacke The production at Bard on the Beach is a modern reboot and I‘m really looking forward to it. 6y
tournevis I love this play. 6y
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Kimberlone
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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If only all wars could be ended this way...

I forgot how funny this play is!

23 likes2 comments
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Brie
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Ancient Greece. The Peloponnesian War rages relentlessly. The women of Athens, led by Lysistrata, try to force the men to negotiate for #peace by withholding sex. Comedic hilarity ensues and gender relations are explored. #maybookflowers

PurpleyPumpkin Great choice for this prompt!👍🏽 8y
AmandaL Would you believe me if I told you that I was thinking Lysistrata too for this prompt? 👍 8y
Brie @AmandaL It's a good choice! I've seen one or two other Lysistrata posts. 8y
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batsy
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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saresmoore 🙌 I love that you and @Brie had the same pick for this prompt! 8y
batsy @saresmoore That was my introduction to @Brie with the excellent taste! 🤗 8y
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hwheaties
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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I love my job. I get to watch this modernized Lysistrata and see how much of it I can show my 11th graders.

josie281 Do report back how it was! 8y
OffTheBeatenShelf.com Yes! Please report back. 8y
minkyb I hope it is amazing so the kids will enjoy it! 8y
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hwheaties
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Next up for my juniors. I love this play so much.

#TeachersOfLitsy

BookishMarginalia Seems like an appropriate message of resistance right now. 8y
WhatDeeReads So funny! 8y
Natasha.C.Barnes You'd think they would at least choose an Ancient Greek statue for the cover...I'm not sure Pauline Bonaparte makes a very convincing Lysistrata... 😁 8y
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kevinst_96
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
Pickpick

Very good play, quite feministic already back to the days of Aristophanes. Really funny to read it. Hoping to find a good adaptation of it on the internet.

MrBook Welcome to @Litsy !!! We hope you enjoy your stay, I think you'll like it here 😎👍🏻! 8y
Revenge4bess You know of course, that it wasn‘t supposed to be a play on Feminism? The author wanted to have the men say the lines that he gave the women. But as a free white Male in 5th century Greece, he couldn‘t 4y
2 likes2 comments
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the.bookish.valkyrie
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Strong females and humanized animals? Sign me up! These are a few of my favorite #BannedBooks! If you haven't read them, give 'em a go for #BannedBooksWeek! #SeptPhotoChallenge

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Chey12
Lysistrata | Aristophanes
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Calonice: "And what if they grab us and drag us into the bedroom by force?"

Lysistrata: "Hold onto the door."

Calonice: "And what if they beat us?"

Lysistrata: "Then submit, but disagreeably: men get no pleasure in sex when they have to force you. And make them suffer in other ways as well. Don't worry, they'll soon give in. No husband can have a happy life if his wife doesn't want him to."

Revenge4bess Too true! 4y
2 likes3 stack adds1 comment
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BookNerdBritt
Lysistrata | Aristophanes, Sarah Ruden
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#FunFridayPhoto: favorite book you were assigned to read in school. This play was definitely the most hilarious thing my high school self was ever required to read.

I was tempted to use The Hobbit for this prompt, but it was assigned reading for a college seminar on Tolkien that I chose to take because I was already a Tolkien nerd and therefore probably shouldn't count. 🤓

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