Emiliano Buis
Visiting Fellow, Summer 2018
- AffiliationUniversity of Buenos AiresResearch Project:Legal Laughter: Athenian Juridical Procedure and the Evolution of Greek Comedy in the IV Century BCE
Emiliano J. Buis is a tenured Professor of Ancient Greek (Department of Classics) and of International Law (Law School) at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He studied both Law and Classics at that University, holds a Master’s degree in Ancient History at Université de Paris I, and obtained his PhD in Classics and his Posdoctoral Diploma in Law at UBA. He is an Associate Researcher at the CONICET (National Research Council for Science and Technology). He was a Fellow at the Department of Classics (Brown University), the Max-Planck-Institut für europaïsche Rechstgeschichte, the Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies, the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation in Athens, and the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies (OSU). He chairs the Working Group on Archaic and Classical Greek Law (DEGRIAC) at the National Institute for Legal History in Argentina. His research interests include Athenian law, Greek drama (especially comedy) and the theory and history of International Law in Antiquity. His latest book, Taming Ares. War, Interstate Law, and Humanitarian Discourse in Classical Greece, will be published by Brill in 2018.
About the Research Project
Legal Laughter: Athenian Juridical Procedure and the Evolution of Greek Comedy in the IV Century BCE
<p>During my fellowship I worked on the identification of legal terminology and references to law and courts in comic dramatists from the V and IV Centuries BCE in order to analyze how Old, Middle and New Comedy resorted to what I call a “comic poetic of justice” which had several points in common (strategies such as hyperbole, trans-contextualization and inversion could be identified in different passages from a wide range of plays). In spite of this continuity, however, the development of the comic genre shows an interesting evolution from judicial trials in Aristophanes to private arbitration in Menander, which can be attributed to the shift of the political context and, therefore, to the changing interests of Athenian spectators. I also focused on the updating and revision of a manuscript dealing with the first part of my research, which will be published later this year in Madrid under the provisional title<em> El juego de la ley. La poética cómica del derecho en la producción temprana de Aristófanes (427-414 a.C.).</em></p>