A Poet at Work: The Parody of Helen in the Thesmophoriazusae

Four passages in Greek literature dating from before the fourth century BC explicitly portray the poet at work and three of them are to be found in Aristophanes. Even if these are the only passages where the act of composing is the direct of the literary performance, reading between the lines of another comic parodic text can be shown to provide more information on the actual mechanisms present in the process of "making" poetry. Significant and suggestive implications are to be found in the famous passage of the Thesmophoriazusae that parodies the Euripidean Helen.