Tragedy or Comedy?

1. Tragedy or Comedy?

2. Genre • French: meaning “category” or “type” • Best known: Tragedy and Comedy • Greeks first made the clear distinction between the two genres: a mask for comedy and a mask for tragedy

3. Tragedy • Serious drama involving important personages caught in calamitous circumstances • Prominent in Greece in 5th Century B.C.E. and the Renaissance

4. Traditional Tragedy • Tragic Heroes and Heroines • The Hero is generally a king, a queen, a general, a member of nobility. A Person of Stature • Central character is caught in a set of tragic circumstances • The universe seems to trap the hero or heroine in a fateful web.

5. Traditional Tragedy • Tragic Irretrievability: The tragic situation becomes irretrievable: there is no turning back, no way out. • No honorable avenue of escape; they must go forward to meet their tragic fate. • Acceptance of Responsibility: Hero/Heroine accepts responsibility for actions—recognizes fault of character that leads to the tragic downfall.

6. Traditional Tragedy • Tragic Verse: Language of traditional tragedy is verse. • Verse: poetic • Prose: Paragraph form • The effect of tragedy: Pessimistic? Optimistic?

7. Modern Tragedy • The Common Man • Written in Prose • Arthur Miller’s Death of aSalesman

8. Comedy • Humorous drama whose characters, actions and events are intended to provoke amusement and laughter. • Aristophanes: Lysistrata ( Classical Greece) • Moliere: The Imaginary Invalid (17th Century France)

9. Characteristics of Comedy • Suspension of Natural Laws: In comedy, we do not fear for a person who trips and falls…banana peels, slapsticks, • Contrast between Individuals and the Social Order: the differences between basic assumptions about society and the events in the play. A ridiculous person in a normal world or vice-versa. Tartuffe by Moliere • The comic premise: an idea or concept that turns the accepted notion of thing upside down.

10. Forms of Comedy • Farce: all forms of exaggeration—broad physical humor, plot complications, stereotyped characters. Simply for entertainment and laughter. • Bedroom Farce: marriage and sex are objects of fun

11. Forms of Comedy • Burlesque: physical humor, gross exaggerations, occasional vulgarity. Historically an imitation of other forms of drama: Austin Powers and Scary Movie. Also became a term in the U.S. describing variety shows with “low” Comedy and attractive, half dressed women. • Satire: uses wit, irony and exaggeration to expose or attach evil and foolishness. Chappelle’s Show, Mad TV, SNL

12. Forms of Comedy: Domestic Comedy • Deals with family and family situations. • Found mostly in today’s Situation Comedies (Sitcoms) • Can be families, neighborhoods, co-workers

13. Forms of Comedy: Comedy of Manners • Focused on pointing out the peculiarities of the upper class. • Stresses the use of witty phrases and comebacks rather than the use of physical humor.

14. Extra Terms • Low Comedy: Physical humor. Three Stooges. • Bathroom Humor: bodily functions • High Comedy: Brainy. Witty phrases and “comebacks.” • Puns: A dieter doesn’t like food to go to waist. • Malapropism: the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context