Characters In Comedies Research Articles

Obraz życia kobiet na podstawie "Lizystraty" oraz "Sejmu kobiet" Arystofanesa

It is common knowledge that in ancient times women did not have many rights that were assigned only to men, such as the right to education, owning their own property or freely choosing a partner. The aim of the article is to present the image of the life of women in ancient Greece, with particular emphasis on the citizens of Athens during the Peloponnesian War and after its end, based on two comedies by Aristophanes: Lysistrata and Assemblywomen. By highlighting some stereotypes regarding women, the comedy writer draws attention to the chaos that prevails in political matters for which men are responsible. Women make a kind of transition from the zone of oikos intended for them to the zone of polis, becoming the main characters of comedy.

Οπτικά ενθύμια του ροδιακού κωμωδεῖν

The comic theatrical act in Rhodes is represented by a catalogue of 45 comic masks and figurines, all recovered during rescue excavations in the city of Rhodes. This group of masks and figurines cover a period of about three centuries, consisting representative samples of an abundant Rhodian artistic production inspired by the theater during the Hellenistic period, when Rhodes emerges as a strong and prosperous naval power and becomes a cultural and intellectual center as well. The following catalogue includes depictions of comic types such as caricatures and grotesque figures along with protagonist types of the Rhodian comedians related to the New Comedy characters, guided by the literal source for information in stage presentation of drama theatrical types, the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux and the T.B.L. Webster’s catalogue.

How the Entertaining Effects of Movies Help People to Reduce Chronic Stress and Increase Happiness

With the increasing stress from work and study that people face today, easy-to-access entertainment to release chronic stress and increase happiness would arouse more popularity. As a traditional entertainment industry, Movie is easy to access by going to the cinema or watching online, which has become an increasingly globalized business. The present research was on how the entertaining effects of movies are associated with psychological well-being. It provides a study on three film types, comedies, tearjerkers, and thrilling movies. Comic movies are usually welcome, which bring people happiness by funny plots. Moreover, many scientific experiments made before verified that people will unconsciously mimic the facial expressions of characters in comedies, which turns out to affect the experience of the same emotion of happiness through the integration between the body and brain. Tearjerkers may bring people tears. However, an experiment made by Gracˇanin, Vingerhoets, Kardum, Šantek,& Šimic´ (2015), provided evidence that after the initial deterioration of mood following crying, it takes some time for the mood, not just to recover, but also to become even less negative than before the emotional event. Per Sapolsky, R.M, scary and thrilling movies generate moderate glucocorticoid elevation, which turns out to trigger the release of dopamine from pleasure pathways and gain a sense of anticipatory pleasure. Besides the above mentioned, there are also general benefits of movies, such as social connections, a distraction from worries, and increased flow. All of those make movies good activities to reduce chronic stress and increase happiness.

Slipping on Banana Skins and Falling Through Bars: “True” Comedy and the Comic Character

From Basil Fawlty, The Little Tramp and Frank Spencer; to Jim Carey, Andy Kaufman and Rowan Atkinson… comedy characters and comic actors have proved useful lenses for exploring – and exposing – humor’s cultural and political significance. Both performing as well as chastising cultural values, ideas and beliefs, the comic character gives a unique insight into latent forms of social exclusion that, in many instances, can only ever be approached through the comic form. It is in examining this comic form that this paper will consider how the ‘comedy character’ presents a unique, subversive significance. Drawing from Lacanian conceptions of the subject and television ‘sitcom’ examples, the emancipatory potential of the comedy character will be used to criticize the predominance of irony and satire in comic displays. Indeed, while funny, it will be argued that such comic examples underscore a deprivative cynicism within comedy and humor. Countering this, it will be argued that a Lacanian conception of the subject can profer a comic efficacy that not only reveals how our social orders are inherently inconsistent and open to subversive redefinition, but that these very inconsistencies are also echoed in the subject, and, in particular, the ‘true comedy character’.

“Consent Is Sexy”: exploring the portrayal of prosocial sexuality messages in youth-oriented series

ABSTRACT Content analyses on sexual messages in youth-oriented series have traditionally focused on the distribution of negative or antisocial sexual messages. As such, the potential of youth-oriented series to promote prosocial sexual messages (PSM) has been neglected. Grounded in the 3AM model, this content analysis fills this gap in the literature by examining the occurrence of PSM in youth-oriented series (e.g. Elite) on Netflix. A total of 126 characters (52% male, 48% female) and 3,151 scenes in 65 episodes were coded. The results indicate that PSM were promoted 4 times per episode (i.e. average length was 36 minutes) and were distributed by more than half of the characters. PSM also significantly co-occurred with antisocial sexual messages (ASM) in scenes, suggesting that sexual messages may operate as a “mixed” socialization agent for adolescents’ sexuality development. Further, characters in comedies and non-heterosexual characters more often distributed PSM than respectively characters in dramas and heterosexual characters. The promotion of PSM did not vary by characters’ gender. Implications of these findings in terms of audience effects and suggestions for future research are further discussed.

Vocal Component of Characters of the Comedy by Lope De Vega «Dance Teacher» in the Performance Interpretation of Drama Actors

The purpose of this article is to find out and analyze the characteristic features of the vocal component of the characters of classical Spanish comedy in the performance interpretation of the drama theatre actors (evidence from the famous production of the CTA play Lope De Vega «Dance Teacher», film 1952).Research methodology. The study is based on the general scientific methods: cognitive, analytical, and comparative; and, in particular, music and theoretical methods: interpretation, the analysis of musical forms, vocal-performing.Results. In drama theatre, music is often an artistic and compositional component of a production. The overall musical component of the performance refers to its frequency and vocal performance of actors, which is not the dominant side of the interpretation of the role image, but significantly the complements of the artistic image of the character, bringing into it the inherent emotional and sensual concept of music art. The significant role of the vocal component on the drama stage is clearly represented in the production of the comedy by Lope De Vega «Dance Teacher» (CTA, director V. Kancell, composer A. Crane, film 1952). Singing is included in various scenes of the performance and, in general, is present as a significant artistic component in five of the twelve actors of the comedy: Aldemaro (Vladimir Zeldin), Feliciana (Lyubov Dobrzhanskaya), Vandalino (Mikhail Mayorov), Belardo (Mark Pertsovsky), Lisena (Henrietta Ostrovskaya). Having analyzed the performance interpretation of the drama actors of the main vocal lyrics, the manners of singing used by artists (variety, academic) have been determined, and a specific connection of elements of different manners of sound formation in one vocal lyric has been revealed; it has been noted that a worthy vocal-performing interpretation substantially complements and enriching the artistic image of the role in the dramatic performance. Novelty. The article covers the specific features of the performance interpretation of vocal lyrics by the actors of the drama theatre (evidence from the CTA production of the play Lope De Vega «Dance Teacher», film 1952).The practical significance. The article contains the information that is useful for professional representatives of the theatre art field and students-actors in terms of improving their performance interpretation, developing vocal and stage abilities and skills.

Women, Rhetoric, and Drama in Early Modern Italy by Alexandra Coller

Reviewed by: Women, Rhetoric, and Drama in Early Modern Italy by Alexandra Coller Caterina Mongiat Farina WOMEN, RHETORIC, AND DRAMA IN EARLY MODERN ITALY, by Alexandra Coller. New York: Routledge, 2017. 282 pp. $155.00 cloth; $54.95 ebook. Imagine a place where women own property and support themselves independently, speak and move freely, and can be with a person of their choice. Margherita Costa did just that with the fictional realm of Fessa in her comedy Li buffoni (1641; The Buffoons, 2018). This is only one of the masterpieces discussed in Alexandra Coller’s revisionist canon of Italian drama delineated with philological rigor and critical ingenuity in Women, Rhetoric, and Drama in Early Modern Italy. As Coller explains in the introduction, her book challenges the notion of tragicomedy as the only original genre of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italian drama to argue that early modern comedy, tragedy, and pastoral tragicomedy share a claim to originality for the following reasons: their quantitative and qualitative shift in depicting female characters, their common predilection for Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (c. 1351) in addition to the more obvious classical sources, and their rhetorical choices in signaling cultural and literary shifts in gender representations, which opened new creative possibilities for both male and female playwrights (pp. 1–2). The book is divided in two parts. In the first part (chapters 1–2), Coller focuses on women characters in comedies and tragedies written by men and, in the second part (chapters 3–5), on pastorals written by women. Yet the chapters in part one are felicitously complicated by codas discussing the first extant comedy authored by a woman and the first extant tragedy authored by a woman, respectively. In the first chapter, Coller identifies Ruzante’s L’Anconitana (The Woman from Ancona, 1994), for which she follows Linda Carroll’s dating of 1517–1518, as an early example in fiction of women crossdressing as men for reasons other than love. Coller unveils the ways in which the protagonist Isotta (crossdressed as Gismondo) uses her virtù (skill) in “feminine” arts like fashion together with her rhetorical prowess in speech to fend for herself and teach other women how to achieve grace: “Ruzante is putting forward a female figure who can instruct and dispute” (p. 30). In Coller’s reconstructed canon, which includes among other comedies Alessandro Piccolomini’s Alessandro (1544), Niccolò Secchi’s Gl’inganni (1547; Deceits), Luca Contile’s Cesarea Gonzaga (1550), and Giambattista Della Porta’s Cintia (1601), Ruzante’s women characters establish the originality and preeminence of his comedy. Costa’s Li buffoni joins this canon by exploring the traditionally male genre of comedy. Coller’s fascinating hypothesis is that Costa’s protagonist Marmotta, a noblewoman that leads the utopian realm of Fessa, might have been inspired by Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere [End Page 446] and her female-centered court of Poggio Imperiale, where fiction and history converge regarding the emancipation of women. Differing conceptions of virtù, understood in chapter two as the more traditional “moral virtue” rather than “skill,” and friendship emerge from the juxtaposition of Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio’s and Ludovico Dolce’s tragedies with Valeria Miani’s Celinda (1611) (p. 77). Collectively, the heroines Selene and Eufimia (Cinzio), Marianna and Medea (Dolce), Celinda (Miani), and their female friends argue through eloquent words and deeds that friendship (including friendship between husband and wife) rests on equality and loyalty and that men often fail at one or both of these principles. Coller, here as throughout the book, excels at integrating the complex and necessary synopses of the plays into her rhetorical and critical analysis. The extended coda on Miani’s Celinda gives Coller the opportunity to explore in detail Boccaccio’s influence on certain episodes of the protagonist’s love affair. Part two begins with an eye-opening comparison of satyr scenes in the male canon (Tasso and Battista Guarini are here joined by Agostino Beccari, Luigi Groto, Giovan Maria Avanzi, and Cesare Cremonini among others) with a diverse collection of women-authored pastorals including Isabella Andreini’s Mirtilla (1588), Maddalena Campiglia’s Flori (1588), Barbara Torelli Benedetti’s Partenia (1586), Leonora Bernardi’s Tragicomedia pastorale (Pastoral tragicomedy) written in...

ГАСТРОНОМІЧНА ГУМОРИСТИКА У ЛІТЕРАТУРІ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОГО СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧЧЯ: ТОПОСИ ТА ІСТОРІОГРАФІЯ ПИТАННЯ

The article looks at topoi in gastronomic images of European medieval humoristic texts and seeks to examine the connection between food and comic discourses. The author shall also highlight how these images were evaluated and interpreted by scholars of a different methodological background. The attention is paid to motives in gastronomic humour and comic plots related to food, which were widely spread in Western culture. Gastronomic humour is displayed through examples that are to be found in such medieval literary genres as farce, fabliau, Schwank etc. The study aims to propose a common food comic code, explain the principles of its implementation in the text and show its typical constituent elements. The essay starts with an examination of anthropological and social factors that might have shaped and symbolically and functionally determined gastronomic humour. It is assumed that mouth has a significant role in the processes of organization of nutrition and laughter on the bodily level. Then the author overviews in detail the literary origins of gastronomic jokes tracing their formation from the antique comedy. The development and establishment of food comedy are shown through examples from medieval urban literature. Attention is also drawn to the context in which the text functions, in other words, the specifics of its implementation in time and space. It is revealed that nutrition often appears as a background for comic plots, and culinary spaces are typical locations in humoristic stories. According to their professional activity comedy characters are also closely related to food. It is noticed that the food itself becomes a subject of conflict in a comic situation. Main characters actions are concentrated around the food, drinks or dishes. Another aspect of gastronomic humour involves a situation where eating resembles defecation. A typical comic tool on its own is the analogy between having a meal and sex. The paper also describes the features of food that often appear in humoristic texts and therefore has a higher level of comic value.

Nugae Theatri

Abstract This article examines Erasmus’ additions to the Adagia in 1533 drawn from comedic playwrights Plautus and Terence. Although Erasmus generally expressed a preference for Terence, Plautus is cited more frequently overall in the Adages and the 133 borrowings from Plautus in the 1533 additions drastically outnumber the 22 from Terence. While scholars have noted this numerical discrepancy, few have hazarded concerted attempts to explain it. This article analyzes the different Plautine and Terentian references in the additions of 1533 and reads them in the context of Erasmus’ other educational writings on classical literature and particularly on characters in comedy. Ultimately, two explanations for Erasmus’ apparent preference for Plautus in 1533 present themselves. First, Plautus presented memorable characters who illustrated the tension between eloquence and morality that characterized the debate in Erasmus’ time over comedy’s role in education. Second, Giambattista Pio’s 1500 edition of Plautus with commentary provided Erasmus with other motivations, such as the opportunity for textual criticism, to focus on Plautus.

A Study on The Reception of Comedy in Kollywood Movies by College Students

Comedy films have a greater impact in the society as it entertains the mass audience and conveys the message in a effective manner. The reach of the comedy in films and the genre itself has lead to an extent of staring television channels and programmes. Not only comedy movies but also the comedy scenes in the movies have a greater reach. This can be seen more prominently when people try to imitate the comedian and use their dialogues in real life situations. Even though comedy scene in movies doesn't have a separate plot for itself, the comedy characters entertain the audience. Growing interest shown in comedy by audience has lead to the emergence of television channels and movies of comedy genre. At present, there is a sudden craze for stand up comedy in our country. This study aims at the finding out the factors that influences the viewing pattern of the young minds and get entertained. This is a qualitative study with a sample size of 100. A structured questionnaire was prepared and the responses were analysed using SPSS version 12. The results were analysed using chi square test and one way ANOVA.

Back of the book, back of the net: the comedy book indexes of Partridge and Toast

Paula Clarke Bain takes a look at the comedy book indexes of the spoof memoirs of established British TV comedy characters Alan Partridge and Steven Toast. The indexes are pretty laughable – but mostly for the right reasons.

ULISSES NO INFERNO DA DIVINA COMÉDIA – UMA COMPARAÇÃO DO HERÓI EM DANTE, HOMERO E VIRGÍLIO

Ulisses é um personagem constante na literatura ocidental e Dante Alighieri foi um dos autores que o retrabalharam. Na Divina Comédia, Ulisses está na oitava vala do oitavo círculo do Inferno, correspondente aos fraudadores. Na construção do personagem, Dante retoma características de Ulisses da tradição grega e latina, o que é analisado e comparado nesse artigo a partir das elaborações de Homero e Virgílio. Ao fim, estabelece-se uma relação entre Ulisses e os Dantes – autor e personagem da Comédia.

The Ethical Values of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare̛s other Comedies

Focusing on Twelfth Night and Shakespeares other comedies, this essay aims to explore how ethical values are achieved through the laugher of readers/audiences in four aspects. Firstly, the act of crossdressing in Shakespeares comedies leads to the confusion of ethical identity and accordingly the chaos of ethical order, which generates the dramatic conflicts in comedy. Secondly, the contrast of ethical choice in words and conducts between comedy characters with worthless pursuit and those in pursuit of truth, kindness and beauty demonstrates the teaching value of comedy. Thirdly, the ending of comedy, which often explicates the victory of good over evil—a concept not in complete conformity with reality, fully reflects the writer’s ethical choice and his moral ideal. Fourthly, the teaching function of comedy among appreciators is achieved through their laugher at unethical behaviors of characters. It is in this moment of ethical identification that the audience experience the moment of “spontaneous glory” and enlightenment on moral consciousness.

Bronze for Gold: Subjectivity in Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans

This paper analyzes the construction of subjectivity in Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans. Lucian manipulates expectations by mingling the characters of comedy with the form of philosophy and thus produces a complex subject. A close reading of Dialogue 6 suggests that through a cryptic allusion to Plato and Homer, Lucian presents the courtesan through the lens of elite Greek masculine subjectivity. The subject that emerges in this dialogue through the interplay of male and female, past and present, and high and low culture embodies the anxieties of the sophist in the Roman empire.

III New Comedy and Menander

After Aristophanes' Wealth (388), our next complete surviving comedy is Menander's Dyskolos from 316: a gap longer than the period spanned by our entire corpus of surviving tragedy. The lost lifetime of ‘Middle Comedy’ is far from a desert; though papyrus texts are scarce, quotations in later Greek texts are very numerous, with Athenaeus' ten-book dialogue Deipnosophistae or ‘Dinner-Party Scholars’ (c. 200 AD) a particularly rich source of snippets concerned with all aspects of food, drink, and the symposium – themes which, even allowing for Athenaeus' specialized interests, seem to have been unusually prominent in the comedy of the era. The relatively abundant fragments and titles fall tantalizingly short of allowing us to trace the evolution of the genre in detail, but it is clear that, by the time Menander began producing in 320 BC, the form and character of comedy had changed, and the long development of Athenian comedy had more or less stabilized. We do not see much further change over the course of Menander's career or in the surviving remains of plays from the following generation, and the plays of New Comedy, even the extant Menander, largely resist attempts at specific dating.

Viewer perception of gender roles on network prime‐time television

This study examines the perception of sex roles on network prime‐time television programming. College students (N = 321) rated major female and males characters in comedies and dramas during prime time using the Bem Sex‐Role Inventory (BSRI). Compared to Peevers' (1979) study, male characters were found to be less sex‐typed. In fact, both sexes were perceived similar to real life people. However, differences were found by genre, with male and female leads perceived as stereotypically depicted in dramas but comparable in comedies. The utility of using character perceptions as a complement to traditional content analyses of TV shows is discussed.

AMICI ET SODALES: AN EXAMINATION OF A DOUBLE MOTIF IN PLAUTUS

AbstractOne of the ways in which Plautus investigates friendship is through his use of the stock characters so central to Roman comedy. Among the twelve stock characters of comedy that Apuleius lists, appears the figure of the sodalis opitulator (the 'helpful mate'), who has not so far drawn much attention. Not only does Plautus use this character frequently, in five of his twenty extant plays he employs not one friend, but two, as a double motif. In these plays, Plautus uses these double stock characters to parody the ideals of friendship which had developed in the literary tradition, and to play with the conventions of drama as part of a metatheatrical approach to comedy. By a doubling of this motif, Plautus highlights friendship, in order to look at other literary or dramatic themes that include the ideal literary friendship, the supremacy of the Plautine slave and drama itself.

The number of speaking actors in Old Comedy

The number of speaking actors in Old Comedy has been much discussed, but no consensus has been reached. The old assumption that the number was three, as in tragedy, was shaken when it was realized that some scenes of Aristophanes have four characters on-stage at once, all taking part in the dialogue: for example, in Lys. 77–253 we have Lysistrate, Kalonike, Myrrhine, and Lampito, and in Frogs 1414–81 we have Dionysos, Aiskhylos, Euripides, and Plouton. Rees therefore argued that there was no fixed number, but that view was not generally accepted. A more widely held view is that there were three principal actors with additional performers for small parts. However, there is no evidence contemporary with Aristophanes which distinguishes three actors from the others in this way, and it is probable that writers of later periods who mention three actors are referring to their own times and did not have authentic information about the fifth century. The passage which DFA, p. 149, seems to regard as the most trustworthy is in a brief account of comedy attributed to Tzetzes: πιγενμενος δ Κρατῖνος κατστησε μν πρτον τ ν τῇ κωμῳδᾳ πρσωπα μεχρ τριν, στσας τν ταξαν4DFA paraphrases this as ‘Cratinus reduced the disorderliness and, in some sense, fixed the number of regular actors at three’. But πρσωπα means ‘masks’ or ‘characters’; it does not mean ‘actors’ (for which the Greek word is ὑποκριτα). What the writer meant by saying that Kratinos settled the masks or characters in comedy at ‘up to three’ is not clear, but his statement is useless as evidence for the number of actors.

The Alogical and Absurdist Aspects of Russian Realist Drama

The first performance of Nikolai Gogol's comedy The Inspector General took place in April of 1836 with the expressed approval and encouragement of the reigning monarch, Nicholas I. Although not very successfully staged, the play created an effect that neither the emperor nor the playwright had foreseen. To Gogol's horror, much of the popular opinion of the day and a considerable segment of the press saw in his play a wholesale indictment of Russian reality. Those who favored such an indictment hastened to stress the realistic nature of the new comedy and insisted on seeing in it a precisely recorded, unvarnished transcript of what life was really like in a provincial Russian town. Monarchist-minded critics, such as the notorious Faddei Bulgarin and other defenders of the regime, on the other hand, stressed the unreal, improbable, even fantastic nature of the comedy's characters and situations. The Russia depicted by Gogol, those status-quo defenders argued, existed only in the author's imagination.

The Genesis of Toby: A Folk Hero of the American Theater

THE VERY NATURE OF FOLKLORE usually precludes any possibility of watching the process of its development. If we know the actual creator of the work of folk art, this knowledge tends to forbid its classification as folklore; and in an art of such public nature as the theater, folk activity would be especially inhibited, since theatrical effect is usually controlled by one or two professionals or a very small professional group. Yet, paradoxically, in the development of the popular theatrical character Toby, we have a full record of his ancestry, knowledge of his very beginnings in Fred Wilson's portrayal of Tobe Haxton in Clouds and Sunshine, and the story of the development and modification of the character through audience response throughout the next twenty years. This extraordinary tale has been noticed and written about for the past thirtyfive or forty years in Sunday newspaper feature articles and theatrical journals, but it has been presented uncritically and inaccurately. Here is Toby's story, told as accurately as careful study of the printed records and the tradition handed down orally and through personal correspondence permits. Although theater historians have lately begun to take some notice of the tent repertory companies,1 their history along with that of the companies playing the small-town theaters or opera houses during an earlier period, has been generally neglected, and the creation of the Toby character either scorned or ignored. This attitude grew out of the contempt of the cities for the small towns and the resulting prejudice that the only theatrical activity worth writing about was that of the big cities. Even so, this small-town theater, with its own traditions and techniques, flourished completely independent of the metropolitan theater. In time a distinctive literature of melodrama and comedy based on the tastes and attitudes of the audiences developed, and two distinctive comedy characters originated: the Toby, the red-headed, freckle-faced youngster who is smarter than he looks, and the G-string, the garrulous and officious old man who is too easily gulled. Nevertheless, both the plays and these two characters have their roots in general theatrical tradition.