From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Comedy (from the Greek κωμωδία, komodia) as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was remarkably influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters.^[1] The theatrical genre can be simply described as a dramatic performance which pits two societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye famously depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old",^[2] but this dichotomy is seldom described as an entirely satisfactory explanation. A later view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes; in this sense, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse to ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.^[3]

Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of comedy. Satire and political satire use ironic comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of humor. Satire is a type of comedy. Parody borrows the form of some popular genre, artwork, or text but uses certain ironic changes to critique that form from within (though not necessarily in a condemning way). Screwball comedy derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations or characters. Black comedy is defined by dark humor that makes light of so called dark or evil elements in human nature. Similarly scatological humor, sexual humor, and race humor create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways. A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper class society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms, and focuses on the foibles of those who are falling in love.

Etymology

The word "comedy" is derived from the Classical Greek κωμῳδία kōmōidía, which is a compound either of κῶμος kômos (revel) or κώμη kṓmē (village) and ᾠδή ōidḗ (singing); it is possible that κῶμος itself is derived from κώμη, and originally meant a village revel. The adjective "comic" (Greek κωμικός kōmikós), which strictly means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage, generally confined to the sense of "laughter-provoking".^[4] Of this, the word came into modern usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time, passed through various shades of meaning.^[5]

The Greco-Roman mask of Thalia in a Three Stooges slapstick short title card.

Greeks and Romans confined the word "comedy" to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Divina Commedia. As time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter.^[5] During the Middle Ages, the term "comedy" became synonymous with satire, and later humour in general, after Aristotle's Poetics was translated into Arabic in the medieval Islamic world, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and Islamic philosophers, such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. Due to cultural differences, they disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms, such as hija (satirical poetry). They viewed comedy as simply the "art of reprehension", and made no reference to light and cheerful events, or troublous beginnings and happy endings, associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term "comedy" thus gained a more general semantic meaning in Medieval literature.^[6]

History

Comedy is one of the original four genres of literature as defined by the philosopher Aristotle in his work called Poetics. The other three genres are Tragedy, Epic, and Lyric. Literature in general is defined by Aristotle as a mimesis, or imitation of, life. Comedy is the third form of literature, being the most divorced from a true mimesis. Tragedy is the truest mimesis, followed by epic, comedy and lyric. The genre of comedy is defined by a certain pattern according to Aristotle's definition. All comedies begin with a low, typically with an "ugly" guy who can't do anything right. By the end of the story or play, the "ugly" guy has won the "pretty" girl, or whatever it was he was aiming for at the beginning. Comedies also have elements of the supernatural, typically magic and for the ancient Greeks the gods. Comedy includes the unrealistic in order to portray the realistic. For the Greeks, all comedies ended happily which is opposite of tragedy, which ends sadly. The oldest Greek comedy is Homer's Odyssey, the story of Odysseus and his crew's attempt to return home after the fall of Troy.

Aristophanes, a dramatist of the Ancient Greek Theater wrote 40 comedies, 11 of which survive and are still being performed. In ancient Greece, comedy seems to have originated in bawdy and ribald songs or recitations apropos of fertility festivals or gatherings, or also in making fun at other people or stereotypes.^[4] Aristotle, in his Poetics, states that comedy originated in Phallic songs and the light treatment of the otherwise base and ugly. He also adds that the origins of comedy are obscure because it was not treated seriously from its inception.^[7]

Comedy took on a different view with the advent of the Christian era. The comic genre was divided by Dante in his work The Divine Comedy, made up of the epic poems Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Dante's division of comedy into three sub genres still exist today in various forms^{[citation needed]}. Inferno represents the darkest of all comedies, or what is known as dark or black comedy^{[citation needed]}. In such comedy, one is forced to laugh or enjoy dark or black topics that one shouldn't enjoy or laugh at. Generally, most who read the whole Divine Comedy find the Inferno to be the most enjoyable of the three. At the end of the dark comedy, one is still left with a sense of hope but one has not necessarily achieved what one has looked for. Purgatorio is made up of what most comedies today possess. Purgatorio is light hearted, at least compared to Inferno, and yet one still does not achieve fully what one looks for. As such, Purgatorio leaves the main character with a sense of hope greater than what was felt at the end of Inferno. Paradiso is the most traditional of the three in way of the Greek standard of comedy^{[citation needed]}. The supernatural play a huge role in all three poems, but Paradiso ends the happiest of all three with the main character achieving his goal. Infernal, Purgatorial and Paradisal comedies are the three main genres in which one can place all other comic forms^{[citation needed]}.

The phenomena connected with laughter and that which provokes it have been carefully investigated by psychologists. They agreed the predominating characteristics are incongruity or contrast in the object, and shock or emotional seizure on the part of the subject. It has also been held that the feeling of superiority is an essential, if not the essential, factor: thus Thomas Hobbes speaks of laughter as a "sudden glory". Modern investigators have paid much attention to the origin both of laughter and of smiling, as well as the development of the "play instinct" and its emotional expression.

George Meredith, in his 1897 classic Essay on Comedy, said that "One excellent test of the civilization of a country ... I take to be the flourishing of the Comic idea and Comedy; and the test of true Comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter." Laughter is said to be the cure to being sick. Studies show, that people who laugh more often, get sick less.^[8][9]

Forms of comedy

Comedy may be divided into multiple genres based on the source of humor, the method of delivery, and the context in which it is delivered. The different forms often overlap, and most comedy can fit into multiple genres. Some of the sub-genres of comedy are farce, comedy of manners, burlesque, and satire.

Performing arts

History

• Ancient Greek comedy, as practiced by Aristophanes and Menander
• Ancient Roman comedy, as practiced by Plautus and Terence
• Burlesque, from Music hall and Vaudeville to Performance art
• Citizen comedy, as practiced by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson
• Clowns such as Richard Tarlton, William Kempe, and Robert Armin
• Comedy of humours, as practiced by Ben Jonson and George Chapman
• Comedy of intrigue, as practiced by Niccolò Machiavelli and Lope de Vega
• Comedy of manners, as practiced by Molière, William Wycherley and William Congreve
• Comedy of menace, as practiced by David Campton and Harold Pinter
• comédie larmoyante or 'tearful comedy', as practiced by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée and Louis-Sébastien Mercier
• Commedia dell'arte, as practiced in the twentieth-century by Dario Fo, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Jacques Copeau
• Farce, from Georges Feydeau to Joe Orton and Alan Ayckbourn
• Jester
• Laughing comedy, as practiced by Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Restoration comedy, as practiced by George Etherege, Aphra Behn and John Vanbrugh
• Sentimental comedy, as practiced by Colley Cibber and Richard Steele
• Shakespearean comedy, as practiced by William Shakespeare
• Stand-up comedy
• Dadaist and Surrealist performance, usually in cabaret form
• Theatre of the Absurd, used by some critics to describe Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet and Eugène Ionesco^[10]
• Sketch comedy

Literature

• Comic novel
• Light poetry

Film

• Comedy film
  • Anarchic comedy film
  • Gross-out film
  • Parody film
  • Romantic comedy film
  • Screwball comedy film
  • Slapstick film

Television and radio

• Television comedy
  • Situation comedy
• Radio comedy

Lists of comedy television programs

See also

References

• Aristotle, Poetics.
• Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
• Marteinson, Peter (2006). On the Problem of the Comic: A Philosophical Study on the Origins of Laughter, Legas Press, Ottawa, 2006.
• Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur Wallace
  • Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy , 1927.
  • The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, 1946.
  • The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 1953.
• Raskin, Victor, The Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, 1985.
• Riu, Xavier, Dionysism and Comedy, 1999. [2]
• Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Trypanis, C.A. (1981). Greek Poetry from Homer to Seferis. University of Chicago Press. 
• Wiles, David, The Masked Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance, 1991.

External links

• Comedy at the Open Directory Project
• A Vocabulary for Comedy
• The History of Comedy

From Wikiquote

The Marx Brothers were a popular team of sibling comedians who appeared in vaudeville, stage plays, film, and television.

Comedy has a popular meaning (stand-up, along with any discourse generally intended to amuse), which differs from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece. The theatrical genre can be simply described as a dramatic performance pitting two societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, and there are many recognized genres.

Sourced

• I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things — because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.
  • Woody Allen, interview in Helene Zuber (June 20, 2005). "Interview with Woody Allen: 'Nothing Pleases Me More than Being Thought of as a European Filmmaker'", Der Spiegel, SPIEGELnet GmbH. Retrieved on 26 December 2007.

• What we eventually run up against are the forces of humourlessness, and let me assure you that the humourless as a bunch don't just not know what's funny, they don't know what's serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn't be trusted with anything.
  • Martin Amis, "Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)
• By calling him humourless I mean to impugn his seriousness, categorically: such a man must rig up his probity ex nihilo.
  • Martin Amis, Experience (2000), Part I: "Failures of Tolerance"

• Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
  • Mel Brooks, The 2,000 Year Old Man (1961).

• It is the duty of the humor of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they cannot die before they are killed.
  • Lord Buckley, "H-Bomb" (comic monologue), 1960. Reported in Stephen Holden, It's Comedy! From Skit To Song To Satire (October 27, 1989) The New York Times.

• A Day without Laughter is like a Day without Sunshine
  • Charlie Chaplin

• It is not funny that anything else should fall down, only that a man should fall down ... Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
  • G. K. Chesterton, "Spiritualism", in All Things Considered (1908)

• A joke's a very serious thing.
  • Charles Churchill, The Ghost (1763), book iv, line 1386.

• Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time—of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid.
  • Stephen Colbert, interview in James Kaplan (September 23, 2007). "After tragedy, TV funnyman Stephen Colbert says,: "If you are laughing, you can’t be afraid", PARADE Magazine, ParadeNet, Inc. Retrieved on 16 January 2008.

• Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humour?
  • Frank Moore Colby, (1926) The Colby Essays, Vol. 1., "Satire and Teeth". Reported in Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, Columbia University Press. (1993) ISBN 0231071949. p. 431.

• I think you are absolutely right about everything, except I think humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell.
  • Will Cuppy, in a letter to Max Eastman, 1936, about Eastman's book, The Enjoyment of Laughter
  • Unpublished source: "Eastman mss.", Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University

• I can't even really tell a joke. I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it and I feel guilty saying that, but it's the truth. I love my work but it ain't easy.
  • Madeline Kahn, interview with Michael Specter, (April 8, 1993) "At Home With: Madeline Kahn; Funny? Yes, but Someone's Got to Be", The New York Times, The New York Times Company

• Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
  • Christopher Morley, as quoted in An Enchanted Life : An Adept's Guide to Masterful Magick‎ (2001) by Patricia Telesco, p. 189

• I'd like to make you laugh for about ten minutes. Though I'm gonna be on for an hour.
  • Richard Pryor, reported in (December 11, 2005). "In quotes: Richard Pryor", BBC News, BBC. Retrieved on 16 January 2007.

• Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.
  • George Saintsbury, A Last Vintage, p. 172

• A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in "A View from the Asylum" in Philosophical Investigations from the Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry Dribble, p. 87

Attributed

• Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
  • Karl Barth, reported in Mary Cox Garner (2004). The Hidden Souls of Words, SelectBooks, Inc. p. 143. ISBN 1590790596.

• As soon as You realize Everything's a Joke,being The Comedian is the only Thing that makes Sense
  • The Comedian Watchmen

• Comedy is tragedy plus time.
  • Carol Burnett, reported in Marty Grothe (2004). Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom from History's Greatest Wordsmiths, HarperCollins. p. 126. ISBN 0060536993.

• There are two thoughts that will ensure success in all you do; (1) Don't tell everything you know, and (2) until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.
  • Jim Carrey, reported in Patrick Combs; Jack Canfield (2003). Major in Success, Ten Speed Press. p. 60. ISBN 1580085326.

• The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays the part.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, reported in Marty Grothe (2004). Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom from History's Greatest Wordsmiths, HarperCollins. p. 126. ISBN 0060536993.

• If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And, if I can persuade you to laugh at a particular point that I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge it as true.
  • John Cleese, reported in Nicki Joy (2003). What Winners Do to Win!: The 7 Minutes a Day That Can Change Your Life, John Wiley and Sons. p. 113. ISBN 0471265772.

• Humor is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of the infinite.
  • Christian Morgenstern, reported in Mary Cox Garner (2004). The Hidden Souls of Words, SelectBooks, Inc. p. 142. ISBN 1590790596.

• Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.
  • Will Rogers, reported in Geoff Tibballs (2004). The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners, Carroll & Graf Publishers. p. 122. ISBN 0786714077.

• Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
  • Peter Ustinov, reported in Geoff Tibballs (2004). The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners, Carroll & Graf Publishers. p. 122. ISBN 0786714077.

• The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator's place and laugh at his own misfortunes.
  • Bert Williams, reported in Jacqueline Sweeney (1997). Incredible Quotations: 230 Thought-Provoking Quotes With Prompts to Spark Students' Writing, Thinking and Discussion, Teaching Resources/Scholastic. p. 26. ISBN 0590963783.

External links

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