Laughter and distributed attention in the spectating of Aristophanic comedy

What can positive psychology tell us about the ancient audience’s experience of Aristophanic comedy?

Drawing on research in the field of cognitive science which has shown that ‘thinking’ is not detached from emotion I shall argue that comic laughter, as an embodied experience, does not disrupt concentration but instead facilitates a different and more broadened mode of attention which affects the way in which theatre audiences perceive their surrounding environment. In the context of Aristophanic theatre, a broadening of attention would have facilitated audiences to experience the comedy of Aristophanes as an expansive and unpredictable world. This was in tune with the ‘openess’ of Aristophanic comedy as expressed through its discontinuous narrative, multiplicity of action and ‘re-creative’ characters.