Example of Comedy Character That Falls but Gets Up Again
Comedy
According to Aristotle (who speculates on the matter in his Poetics), aboriginal comedy originated with the komos, a curious and improbable spectacle in which a company of festive males apparently sang, danced, and cavorted rollickingly effectually the image of a large phallus. (If this theory is true, by the way, it gives a whole new pregnant to the phrase "stand up-up routine.")
Accurate or not, the linking of the origins of comedy to some sort of phallic ritual or festival of mirth seems both plausible and appropriate, since for most of its history--from Aristophanes to Seinfeld--comedy has involved a high-spirited celebration of human sexuality and the triumph of eros. As a rule, tragedies occur on the battlefield or in a palace's corking hall; a more likely setting for comedy is the bedroom or bathroom.
On the other hand, information technology's not true that a flick or literary work must involve sexual sense of humour or even be funny in society to qualify equally a comedy. A happy ending is all that's required. In fact, since at least as far back as Aristotle, the basic formula for one-act has had more than to do with conventions and expectations of plot and character than with a requirement for lewd jokes or cartoonish pratfalls. In essence: A comedy is a story of the rise in fortune of a sympathetic central graphic symbol.
The comic hero
Of course this definition doesn't mean that the main character in a comedy has to be a spotless hero in the archetype sense. It simply means that she (or he) must display at least the minimal level of personal charm or worth of character it takes to win the audience'due south basic approval and support. The rise of a completely worthless person or the triumph of an utter villain is not comical; information technology'southward the stuff of gothic fable or dark satire. On the other paw, judging from the qualities displayed by many of literature's virtually popular comic heroes (eastward.thou., Falstaff, Huck Finn) audiences have no trouble at all pulling for a likeable rogue or fun-loving scamp.
Aristotle suggests that comic figures are mainly "average to below average" in terms of moral character, perhaps having in mind the wily servant or witty knave who was already a stock character of ancient comedy. He also suggests that only depression or ignoble figures can strike us every bit ridiculous. However, the most ridiculous characters are often those who, although well-born, are merely pompous or self-important instead of truly noble. Similarly, the nearly sympathetic comic figures are often plucky underdogs, young men or women from humble or disadvantaged backgrounds who testify their real worth--in effect their "natural dignity"--through diverse tests of grapheme over the course of a story or play.
Ordinary People
Traditionally, comedy has to do with the concerns and exploits of ordinary people. The characters of comedy therefore tend to be plain, everyday figures (e.chiliad., lower or center-income husbands and wives, students and teachers, children and parents, butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers ) instead of the kings, queens, heroes, plutocrats, and heads of land who course the dramatis personae of tragedy. Comic plots, accordingly, tend to be about the kind of problems that ordinary people are typically involved with: winning a new boyfriend (or reclaiming an old one), succeeding at a chore, passing an exam, getting the coin needed to pay for a medical performance, or but coping with a bad day. Over again, the true authentication of one-act isn't always laughter. More often, it's the uncomplicated satisfaction we feel when we witness deserving people succeed.
Types of Comedies
Comedies tin be separated into at to the lowest degree 3 subordinate categories or sub-genres--identified and briefly characterized as follows:
- Farce.
The identifying features of farce are zaniness, slapstick humor, and hilarious improbability. The characters of farce are typically fantastic or absurd and usually far more ridiculous than those in other forms of one-act. At the same time, farcical plots are often full of wild coincidences and seemingly endless twists and complications. Elaborate comic intrigues involving deception, disguise, and mistaken identity are the rule. Examples of the genre include Shakespeare'south Comedy of Errors, the "Pinkish Panther" movies, and the films of the Marx Brothers and Iii Stooges.
- Romantic One-act. Perhaps the well-nigh popular of all comic forms--both on stage and on screen--is the romantic comedy. In this genre the primary distinguishing characteristic is a love plot in which two sympathetic and well-matched lovers are united or reconciled. In a typical romantic comedy the 2 lovers tend to be young, likeable, and apparently meant for each other, yet they are kept apart past some complicating circumstance (e.g., class differences, parental interference; a previous girlfriend or young man) until, surmounting all obstacles, they are finally wed. A wedding-bells, fairy-tale-style happy ending is practically mandatory. Examples: Much Ado nearly Nada, Walt Disney's Cinderella, Guys and Dolls, Sleepless in Seattle.
- Satirical Comedy. The subject area of satire is human vice and folly. Its characters include con-artists, criminals, tricksters, deceivers, wheeler-dealers, two-timers, hypocrites, and fortune-seekers and the gullible dupes, knaves, goofs, and cuckolds who serve equally their all-too-willing victims. Satirical comedies resemble other types of one-act in that they trace the rise fortune of a central graphic symbol. However, in this case, the central graphic symbol (like virtually everybody else in the play or story) is likely to be cynical, foolish, or morally corrupt. Examples: Aristophanes's The Birds, Ben Jonson'southward Volpone. In its most farthermost forms (e.g., the movies Fargo and Pulp Fiction), satirical comedy spills over into and so-called Blackness one-act--where we're invited to laugh at events that are mortifying or grotesque.
Tragedy
In essence, tragedy is the mirror image or negative of comedy. For instead of depicting the rise in circumstances of a down-hearted or outcast underdog, tragedy shows us the downfall of a once prominent and powerful hero. Similar comedy, tragedy also supposedly originated as office of a religious ritual--in this case a Dionysian ceremony with dancers dressed as goats or animals (hence tragoedia, literally a "caprine animal-vocal) pantomiming the suffering or death-rebirth of a god or hero.
Aristotelian Tragedy .
Once once again, the most influential theorist of the genre is Aristotle, whose Poetics has guided the composition and disquisitional interpretation of tragedy for more than 2 millenia. Distilling the many penetrating remarks contained in this commentary, we can derive the post-obit general definition: Tragedy depicts the downfall of a basically good person through some fatal fault or misjudgment, producing suffering and insight on the part of the protagonist and arrousing pity and fear on the part of the audition.
To explain this definition further, we tin state the following principles or general requirements for Aristotelian tragedy:
- A true tragedy should evoke pity and fear on the part of the audience. According to Aristotle, pity and fearfulness are the natural human being response to spectacles of pain and suffering--specially to the sort of suffering that tin strike anybody at any fourth dimension. Aristotle goes on to say that tragedy effects "the catharsis of these emotions"--in effect arrousing pity and fear merely to purge them, as when we go out a scary motion-picture show feeling relieved or exhilarated.
- The tragic hero must be substantially admirable and good. Every bit Aristotle points out, the fall of a scoundrel or villain evokes adulation rather than pity. Audiences cheer when the bad guy goes down. On the other hand, the downfall of an substantially proficient person disturbs us and stirs our pity. Equally a rule, the nobler and more truly admirable a person is, the greater will be our anxiety or grief at his or her downfall.
- In a truthful tragedy, the hero's demise must come as a effect of some personal error or decision. In other words, in Aristotle'due south view there is no such thing equally an innocent victim of tragedy, nor tin can a genuinely tragic downfall ever be purely a affair of blind accident or bad luck. Instead, accurate tragedy must always be the product of some fatal choice or action, for the tragic hero must always behave at least some responsibility for his own doom.
Anagnorisis ("tragic recognition or insight"): according to Aristotle, a moment of clairvoyant insight or understanding in the mind of the tragic hero as he suddenly comprehends the web of fate that he has entangled himself in.
Hamartia ("tragic error"): a fatal fault or elementary mistake on the role of the protagonist that eventually leads to the final catastrophe. A metaphor from archery, hamartia literally refers to a shot that misses the bullseye. Hence it demand not be an egregious "fatal flaw" (as the term hamartia has traditionally been glossed). Instead, it tin can exist something as basic and inescapable as a simple miscalculation or slip-up.
Hubris ("violent transgression"): the sin par excellence of the tragic or over-aspiring hero. Though it is usually translated as pride, hubris is probably better understood as a sort of insolent daring, a haughty overstepping of cultural codes or ethical boundaries.
Nemesis ("retribution"): the inevitable penalty or cosmic payback for acts of hubris.
Peripateia ("plot reversal"): a pivotal or crucial action on the part of the protagonist that changes his situation from seemingly secure to vulnerable.
Hegelian Tragedy
More than two thousand years after Aristotle's Poetics, the German philosopher Grand.West.F. Hegel (1770-1831) proposed his ain original and highly influential theory of tragedy. Different Aristotle, who defines tragedy in terms of specific requirements of plot and character, Hegel defines it as, at bottom, a dynamic contest between two opposing forces--in effect, a collision or conflict of rights.
Co-ordinate to this scheme, the most tragic events are those in which two esteemed values or goals are in opposition and one of them must give way. For example, suppose in a item case we find ourselves torn between our private careful opinions or religious behavior and our legitimate duties and obligations to the state. Such would be the circumstance, for example, of a conscientious objector facing military service. And such indeed is the situation of Sophocles'southward play Antigone, whose championship heroine finds herself caught betwixt her religious and family obligations and her duties as a public citizen.
In essence, then, a properly synthetic Hegelian tragedy involves a situation in which two rights or values are in fatal disharmonize. Thus it is not (strictly speaking) tragic when good defeats bad or when bad defeats skilful. From Hegel's bespeak of view, the just tragic confrontation is one in which good is up confronting good and the contest is to the death.
Revenge Tragedy
In that location remains 1 further species of tragedy to ascertain and analyze--namely, revenge tragedy, a type that originated in ancient Greece, reached its zenith of popularity in Renaissance London, and which continues to thrill audiences on the argent screen today.
In full general, revenge tragedy dramatizes the predicament of a wronged hero. A typical scenario is as follows: Your daughter has been brutally raped and murdered; merely considering of legal technicalities, the killer is immune to get gratuitous. What exercise you practise? Stoically endure your pain? Or have justice into your own hands? Examples of the revenge theme abound in Greek tragedy (e.g., Agamemnon, Medea) and in Elizabethan drama (Hamlet, Titus Andronicus). The theme is also illustrated in numerous Hollywood westerns and crime thrillers (east.g., Expiry Wish).
Source: https://condor.depaul.edu/dsimpson/tlove/comic-tragic.html
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