Mirth and Creative Cognition in the Spectating of Aristophanic Comedy

This chapter approaches Aristophanic comedy as an emotive environment that was predominantly mirthful and uplifting. Drawing from theories in cognitive science and positive psychology that suggest that positive emotion broadens cognition, it argues that mirth and feelings of joy were not merely responses that measured the comedy's success, but embodied emotions with a fundamental role to play in shaping the audience's mode of thinking, as well as in enhancing the latter's level of creative engagement, turning spectators into co-authors in the meaning making of the event. It is the author's belief that recent advances in the realm of neuroscience can offer scholars new perspectives. These fresh perspectives, which are grounded on hard data about the brain's neural activity, offer a way into this elusive but undeniably significant subject by offering a more rounded account of theatre spectatorship, past and present.