La Muse plaisante dans les Dialogues de Platon

Abstract

We have attempted to analyse the place of ‘comic’– taking the word in a broad sense – in Plato’s Dialogues as everything that provokes laughter. I will firstly try to show that the ‘comic’ so defined is present in several ways in Platonic texts, whether through words expressing it, or through types of discourse where it emerges (pastiche, comedy, fable, satire, pantomime), or characters embodying it. However, as we know, it isn’t good to provoke laughter or getting pleasure out of it because, at the best, that implies becoming a ‘clown’ (bômolochos) or an ‘author of comedy’ (kômôidopoios) and, at the worst, it means enjoying and rejoicing over what one ought to hate because of its perversity: vice (to kakon) and nonsense (to aphron). We should therefore ask ourselves about this apparent contradiction while trying to account for it.