Multimodality of Metaphor in Old Greek Comedy

Can the study of multimodal metaphor in ancient Greek comedy provide new insights or shed new light on the material? Greek comedy combined action, text, music, dance, props, and costumes. It involved a variety of modes on stage, with all those involved in the performance process, including the playwright, the director, the actors, the characters, and the audience, experiencing different kinds of bodily action rooted in the experience and imagination. In this paper I argue that without an appreciation of the cognitive and semiotic capacities of multimodal metaphor it is difficult to interpret and analyse how all this would have worked. A multimodal metaphor consists of an association or blending of domains from different modes, such as visual and verbal, or verbal and auditory, or olfactory and visual. Where the verbal element limits the interpretation, the multimodal element enriches it. The study of multimodal metaphors, then, opens up new perspectives when it comes to determining the full, combined potential of metaphors in Greek drama.