Enacted “Gothic” Narrative

Abstract The article questions the “Gothic” elements and their transformations from one medium to another in archaic and classical Greek culture. It considers some particularities of this narrative in Classical Greek drama, pointing out that the playwrights used the transmediality of these gloomy stories to bridge the spheres of politics, ritual, and culture on a popular level, to make complicated issues accessible to a mass audience, and thus to shape the opinion of the “masses” and in this way to participate in the social formation of reality. The interplay of humour, laughter, and the transmission of knowledge in Old Attic comedy is in focus of this article.