Comedy & Tragedy

1. Comedy & Tragedy Carnival & the Absurd

2. Comedy that which makes us laugh and has a happy ending Tragedy what makes us sad and has an unhappy ending Carnival kind of riotous festival Absurd what perplexes and confounds us

3. Comedy, from Greek, komos-oidos meaning revel-song Aristotle says: happy endings, progression from disorder to order, chaos to harmony characters of inferior moral quality, usually of lower social status (slaves, artisans, traders, etc.) a spectacle of what is ridiculous, but laughable causes no pain there are also sub-genres comedy of humours, based on exaggeration of supposed psychological types: sanguine, melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric (hence 'humorous'=funny) comedy of manners, based on affectations in social appearance and behaviour romantic comedy, involving fantastic adventures and often a love interest pastoral comedy, invoking idyllic or idiotic images of country living, especially amongst romantically prettified or grotesquely uglified shepherds satiric comedy, exposing and censuring faults, usually involving sex and acquisitiveness, often set in a corrupt city or household black comedy, a dark kind of satire, often with an uncertain sense of morality and a sharp sense of absurdity and perhaps with a carnivalesque feel

4. Tragedy, from Greed tragos-oidos (goat-song) unhappy endings and a progression from order to disorder, harmony to chaos characters of superior morals, usually of a high social status: kings, nobles, etc. a spectacle which 'arouses pity and fear' but which not being real but a representation, 'purges' these emotions harmlessly (called catharsis) a plot built around a 'downturn' (cata-strophe) and eventual recognition of a true, appalling state of affairs a hero or heroine (a protagonist) who is basically noble but eventually undone by some tragic flaw (hamartia), often in the form of excessive pride (hubris) as well as some implacable force such as destiny or fate, usually represented by the gods a figure who stands out against the protagonist (the antagonist) as well as a chorus which comments morally, often prophetically, upon the unfolding action 'the representation of an action that is complete and whole'

5. Graham Harman, Wierd Realism “Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in real life.” Aristotle Ultimately, the only thing that can be meant here by “better” and “worse” people is whether they are better or worse in terms of the things they invest their entergy in taking seriously. The tragic figure is involved with objects and incidents that command our respect and interest, while the comic figure has invested attention in things we regard as ridiculous, from red rubber clown noses to social pomposity to absurd addictions and compulsions.

6. “Socrates was trying to prove to them that authors should be able to write both comedy and tragedy: the skillful tragic dramatist should also be a comic poet.” – Plato, Symposium More interesting than these examples, however, would be a deliberate and controlled combination of the comic and the tragic simultaneously. - Harman

7. The Absurd Theatre of the Absurd, 1962 book by Martin EsslinThe absurd group of mid-twentieth c. playwrights, Ionesco, Beckett, Pinter, Albee silence as much as speech absence as much as presence incoherence rather more than coherence explore il/logic, non/character plots, indeterminate setting no clear beginning, middle, end

8. Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd “Absurd” originally means “out of harmony,” in a musical context. Hence its dictionary definition: “out of harmony with reason or propriety; ingongruous, unreasonable, illogical.” In common usage, “absurd” may simply mean “ridiculous,” but this is not the sense in which Camus uses the word, and in which it is used when we speak of the Theatre of the Absurd. In an essay on Kafka, Ionesco defined his understanding of the term as follows: “Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose....Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.”

9. Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd This sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition is the theme of the plays of Beckett, Adamov, Ionesco, Genet, and many other writers. The Theatre of the Absurd tries to achieve a unity between its basic assumptions and the form in which these are expressed (performativity).

10. Carnival Carnival more socially and politically engaged, less philosophically detaches kinds of nonsense Italian carne-vale, farewell to flesh Revel before Lent Mikhail Bakhtin's def: Carnival celebrates the temporary liberation from prevailing truth and from the established order: it marks the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. seen as popular culture opposed or alternative to the official celebration of body over what constrains it political how much are they contained by, or exceed and break open, the frames within which they operate.

11. Bahktin on Carnival "Carnival festivities and the comic spectacles and ritual connected with them had an important place in the life of medieval man. Besides carnivals proper, with their long and complex pageants and processions, there was the 'feast of fools' (festa stultorum) and the 'feast of the ass'; there was a special free 'Easter laughter' (risus paschalis), consecrated by tradition. Moreover, nearly every Church feast had its comic folk aspect, which was also traditionally recognized. Such, for instance, were the parish feasts, usually marked by fairs and varied open-air amusements, with the participation of giants, dwarfs, monsters, and trained animals. A carnival atmosphere reigned on days when mysteries and soties were produced. This atmosphere also pervaded such agricultural feasts as the harvesting of grapes (vendange) which was celebrated also in the city. Civil and social ceremonies and rituals took on a comic aspect as clowns and fools, constant participants in these festivals, mimicked serious rituals such as the tribute rendered to the victors at tournaments, the transfer of feudal rights, or the initiation of a knight. Minor occasions were also marked by comic protocol, as for instance the election of a king and queen to preside at a banquet 'for laughter's sake' (roi pour rire)"

12. These occasions "built a second world and a second life outside officialdom, a world in which all medieval people participated more or less, in which they lived during a given time of the year. If we fail to take into consideration this two-world condition, neither medieval cultural consciousness nor the culture of the Renaissance can be understood. To ignore or underestimate the laughing people of the Middle Ages also distorts the picture of European culture's historic development"