Tradition Of Comedy Research Articles

Поздние комедии А. Ф. Писемского в диалоге с русской комедийной традицией XVIII века

The aim of the research is to reveal the forms of continuity of A. F. Pisemsky’s late plays “The Predators” and “Financial Genius” to the 18th century Russian social comedy. Scientific novelty: Pisemsky’s late comedies are considered for the first time in terms of their orientation towards a dialogue with the national genre tradition, originating in the plays of the 18th century. It has been established that Pisemsky’s comedies enter into a dialogue with the tradition, as evidenced by their similarities to Y. B. Knyazhnin’s “The Boaster” and V. V. Kapnist’s “The Sneak”. Similarities have been found in the sphere of problems, plot, motives, character system, finals’ poetics, and characterology techniques. In “Financial Genius”, as well as in “The Boaster”, cunning deceit is exposed, and the motives of imposture and boasting are similar. The connection of “The Predators” with “The Talebearer” at the level of the problem is manifested in the condemnation of the social “calamity”, which in both comedies takes the place of the main character; the comic fades into the background, the finals convey the idea of the incurability of social evil, which brings in tragic overtones. Pisemsky’s orientation towards the artistic experience of the comedy writers of the 18th century testifies to the continuity of the Russian comedy tradition in the literature of the following century.

Specificity of Comedy in Contemporary Kazakh Prose (E. Tursunov’s Short Story Cycle)

The relevance of this article lies in the need to construct a comprehensive history of the development of comedy in contemporary Kazakhstani literature, of which the works of Ermek Tursunov are an integral part. The author explores various approaches to the study of irony, satire, and humor, including philosophical (G. Hegel, F. Schlegel), cultural (A. Bergson, B. Dzemidok, M. M. Bakhtin, D. S. Likhachev, Y. Borev, A. M. Panchenko, N. V. Ponyrko, V. Ya. Karasev), and philological (V. Tyupa, V. Propp, M. Yu. Asanina, I. A. Obukhova, S. A. Dubrovskaya). The scientific novelty lies in the fact that Tursunov’s stories are analyzed for the first time in the declared aspect. The research has established that, firstly, irony becomes an important means of comedy in Tursunov’s collection of stories “Karashanyrak”. Secondly, non-direct speech ironically exposes the hero’s surrounding world (“How Kazakhs believed in omens”). Thirdly, there is an orientation towards Chekhov’s humorous tradition (“How Kazakhs received guests”, “How brides became wives”). Fourthly, the writer’s humor relies on national Kazakhstani traditions of comedy embodied in folklore (“How Kazakhs organized noisy performances”). Finally, one of the ways of constructing a comedic plot in Tursunov’s stories is through the synthesis of an anecdote with elements of satire. This study offers new insights into the role of comedy in contemporary Kazakhstani literature and contributes to the broader understanding of humor as a literary device.

МОЛЬЕР И МАРИВО

The article examines the originality of Moliere’s comedy tradition transformation in the plays of Marivaux. Being the great comedy reformer Moliere created classic examples of the genre and had a huge impact on the world theater. At the same time, this does not mean that subsequent comedians are completely dependent on Moliere’s manner. Marivaux, although he relies on Moliere’s experience, uses Moliere’s techniques of commedia dell’arte, however, is achieving a different artistic result, a different tone, and uses a different type of comic. This is especially clear when comparing two comedies belonging to the “school” genre - “School of Wives” by Moliere and “School of Mothers” by Marivaux. Moliere, incorporating elements of farce into the “high comedy”, enhances the laughter tone, in essence, the first to associate the comedy genre with laughter. The playwright of the 18th century, condensing various kinds of intrigues in the plot of a one-act comedy, driving an easily resolved ironic-playful love conflict, was finally able to create an original type of rococo love-psychological comedy.

Chanchadas and intermediality

This audiovisual essay investigates the intermedial nature of Brazilian film comedies produced during the 1940s and 50s by exploring the musical numbers of Aviso aos navegantes (Calling All Sailors, Watson Macedo, 1950). Brazilian cinema of this period is a privileged arena of different media strategies. Its “mixed” style is informed by Hollywood cinema but also by the domestic influence of radio, Carnival, and by the local forms of comic staging of the teatro de revista (the Brazilian equivalent of music hall or vaudeville). Of particular interest in this regard are the chanchadas, a body of films made between the mid-1930s and the early 1960s, that presented musical performances intertwined with comic situations, slender narrative lines and strong connections with the world of Carnival. Our aim is to show how the relationships between the different forms of cultural production in 1950s Brazil can be identified in a specific chanchada, opening a dialogue between musical performances on stage, over the radio, at Carnival and on screen. The essay also examines similarities and differences between chanchadas and the Hollywood musical comedy tradition. One area explored is integration, both in the sense in which it is often used in film studies, to discuss the relationship between the numbers and the narrative, and in reflecting on whether the different elements which feed into the numbers of Aviso aos navegantes are seamlessly combined in the film. Despite the huge popular success of his films, Watson Macedo was considered by many as the most “Americanised” of the directors of that period, adhering less to the critical mechanisms of parody than was the case with his contemporaries. However, if we pay attention to Macedo’s musical numbers, it is evident that these performances are not imperfect copies of Hollywood originals, but have a logic of their own. This audiovisual essay complements Flávia Cesarino Costa’s other contribution to this issue of Alphaville, the article “Building an Integrated History of Musical Numbers in Brazilian Chanchadas”, by exploring related ideas in the context of a single film. As well as the interest of the video essay’s own exploration and argument, the pairing of essays—traditional and videographic—enables readers of this issue to pursue their thinking about chanchadas and intermediality with specific audiovisual material in front of them

KOMIZM I JEGO ŹRÓDŁA W PIŚMIE „DE VITANDO AERE ALIENO” PLUTARCHA Z CHERONEI

This paper is devoted to the humour in Plutarch’s speech De Vitando Aere Alieno (That One Ought Not to Borrow). Although the problem raised in this work appears to be serious, Plutarch included humorous elements. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, not only was usury a grave issue, but also one which gave rise to humour. Plutarch used the tradition of comedy and Cynic-Stoic diatribe in a rhetorical purpose. His aim was to persuade the listener or the reader to adopt a moral attitude towards usury.

Apes and japes: Laughter and animality in the Miller’s Tale

This article argues that the humour of The Miller’s Tale is often associated with ideas of laughter as liberating and ‘human.’ Whilst ‘humour’ is a term often applied to apparently ‘civilized’ comedy, we seem to associate the medieval with more basic kinds of laughter, often called ‘buffoonery’ or ‘mirth,’ which seem more animalistic. However, The Miller’s Tale presents complex forms of humour that contest many of our assumptions not only about medieval culture, but also about laughter and its functions. The comedy of the tale works against idealism and chivalric pomp, but rather than a humour that involves asserting the basic human state underneath all this performance, this comedy shows us how laughter plays a key role in establishing conceptions of humanity. If Chaucer’s laughter is to be considered in relation to traditions of comedy at all, it should be discussed in terms of comedy’s ideological power to establish social hierarchies, rather than as a celebration of the natural animal in us all, akin to Greek Old Comedy and buffoonery. Whilst Chaucer’s humour has been read as reflecting Bakhtinian ideas of comedy, here it is shown to be distinctly un-Bakhtinian.

El teatro de Jesús Campos o el falso dilema entre tradición y vanguardia

In the framework of the artistic postmodernism, and with reference to the movement of the trans-avant-garde in Italy, whose ideology we find clear similarities, the theatre of Jesus Campos, located by critics within the movement called «Nuevo Teatro Espanol», due to their expressive boldness and its commitment to anti-Franco, however differs from most of the authors. Thus, unlike these playwrights, Campos does not reject frontally the realism of 50 and 60, or the tradition of comedy and the sainete frequented by conservative authors of the time. On the contrary, since its inception in the early 1970s, Campos uses both forms as expressive resources, from the conviction that the avant-gardes are just one more link in tradition. The analysis of these aspects calls into question the periodization that is being commonly used in the most recent Spanish theatre historiography.

Epicharmus and Aeschylus on Stage in Syracuse in the 5th Century

New excavations give clear information about the Athenian Dionysus-Theatre of the 5th century b.c.; and the stage in Western Greece can now be reconstructed by analogy with it. Vase paintings depict wooden theatres in Sicily from 400 b.c. onwards, mainly for comedy. Tragedies were performed only after 476/5 b.c., but the lively tradition of comedy since the late 6th century b.c. must have had a stage. For Epicharmus’ short comedies, which had no lyrics or chorus and were addressed to the elite of Hieron’s court, the small theatre carved into the slope of the Temenites rock was sufficient. But the performances of Aeschylus’ Aitnaiai and Persians were politically motivated productions addressed to the whole Syracusan demos; they required a chorus, and space for large audiences. The form of the theatre and its wooden stage building, designed by Damokopos Myrilla, can be hypothetically reconstructed by analogy with their Athenian counterparts.

La leadership politica in Italia alla luce della tradizione comica nazionale

Political leadership in Italy in the light of the national comical tradition This essay deals with humour and satire in politics. The issue of humour is contextualized within a wider cultural phenomenon called ‘show civilisation’ or ‘schermopolis’, i.e. the pervasiveness of screens in our everyday life. In doing so I will consider the role of new media and social networks in fostering the use of humour in political discourse. Next I will try to find a new framework for forms of popularity in politics by adapting to the current conjuncture the definitions given by Eric Landowsky at the end of the 1980s. Nowadays the politician-vedette is indeed the most popular form within the show civilisation phenomenon mentioned above. I will demonstrate that some Italian versions of this figure seem inspired by a rich Italian Comedy tradition. Finally, I will propose a number of hypotheses about the ways in which leaders obtain electoral consensus, for example through physical attractiveness, sympathy, and their ability to amuse people. In this perspective, a leader who is good for a laugh seems automatically a good leader.

Taking Center Stage: Lessons of Austrian Comedy in an Advanced German Course

This article focuses on approaches to teaching dramatic comedy in an upper‐level undergraduate course. In particular, it outlines how the genre of comedy permits a special focus on Austria, where the rich tradition of comedy holds a prominent place in German‐speaking Europe. I argue that dramatic comedy grants language learners a unique perspective on the distinct literary and cultural histories of each German‐speaking nation, and that the single‐genre focus allows for closer attention to a variety of sub‐genres, topics, historical periods, rhetorical devices, as well as linguistic variation. The particular approach to comedy outlined here integrates dramatic performance with creative and analytic writings tasks designed to develop cultural and intercultural competencies as well as aesthetic and interpretive abilities. Furthermore, special attention to the rhetorical devices and linguistic variation in comedy promotes critical language awareness and a higher level of linguistic proficiency.

Political Satire in Danish Television: Reinventing a Tradition

This article highlights political satire as part of a long tradition of satirical sketch comedy in Danish public service television. Since the late 1990s, however, there have been major changes to this entertainment tradition. Taking these developments as a point of departure, this article argues that political satire has been trying to reinvent itself under these new conditions. By focusing more and more on the media themselves as the target for satirical ridicule, political satire is reshaping the ideological ambiguity typical of this entertainment tradition. In spite of these current efforts, political satire is presently a struggling branch of the satirical sketch comedy tradition in Danish public service television.

Fathers, Daughters, Crossdressing, and Names: L’Anconitana and Angelo Beolco/Ruzante’s Contribution to Commedia Erudita

The essay examines Angelo Beolco/Ruzante’s place in the scripted comedy tradition by looking at one of his comedies, L’Anconitana , alongside post- Anconitana commedie erudite . My aim is twofold: first, to take stock of the Paduan playwright’s rich contribution by analyzing the protofeminist aspects of this early and highly original yet neglected play; second, to bring to light less well known but equally fascinating dramatic texts which seem to take their impetus, at least in part, from the Ruzantian model. My purpose, ultimately, is to reclaim Ruzante’s Anconitana as another ‘classic’ alongside the canonical Gl’ingannati . By the same token, I seek to highlight reasons more sophisticated than the traditional innamoramento for women’s crossdressing on the Renaissance stage, namely, the quest for an education and/or the acquisition of an inheritance.

The Comedy of Errors (review)

Reviewed by: The Comedy of Errors Barbara Ann Lukacs The Comedy of Errors Presented by The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey at the F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. April 30–May 18, 2008. Directed by Stephen Fried. Set by Wilson Chin. Costumes by Alixandra Gage Englund. Lighting by Charlie Morrison. Sound by Eric Shim. Stage management by Kathy Snyder. With Derek Wilson (Antipholus of Ephesus), Christian Conn (Antipholus of Syracuse), Greg Jackson (Dromio of Ephesus), Nick Cordileone (Dromio of Syracuse), Richard Bourg (Egeon), Melissa Condren (Adriana), Julia Coffey (Luciana), James Michael Reilly (Solinus, Dr. Pinch), Mary Dierson (The Abbess, Emelia), John Ahlin (Angelo), Raphael Nash Thompson (Balthazar), Sarah Miller (Nell), and others. The theme for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s forty-sixth season was identity. Director Stephen Fried, a native of Madison, New Jersey, returned to make his New Jersey directorial debut with The Comedy of Errors, creating a modern interpretation of the play that examined the meaning of identity and how it is defined. Faced with a plot that might be called implausible or ludicrous, Fried avoided these labels by relating the play to our current desire to travel, to visit places beyond our comfort zone, to our fear of those who may be different from us, and to our fear of losing our identities. Fried’s Ephesus was a seedy, rundown town square lined with two-story houses and shops covered with tattered and peeling posters, vaguely reminiscent of some forgotten corner of the Middle East. Towels and tablecloths hung from clotheslines spanning the upper stage, while strings of colorful lights, lanterns, and pennants dangled between the buildings. Fried added silent, mysterious characters who weaved their way through the scenes conveying a sense of danger to the locale. A woman at a newsstand sold bottles of water and tabloids, while a shoeshine boy sat quietly stage left and a paparazzi-like photographer dashed about, clicking away with his camera. The upper and lower acting areas had a total of eight doors that in the tradition of comedy and farce were opened and shut with split-second timing as the actors frantically scurried about using slapstick antics reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, the Keystone Cops, or a Mel Brooks movie. An especially effective use of a door was the scene at Adriana’s house, which afforded the two Dromios several moments of crude humor and spirited verbal exchanges punctuated by physical gestures as they communicated through a large opening in the front door. A third acting area was the entrance to and exit from the subway via the stage floor’s trap door. [End Page 104] Click for larger view View full resolution Christian Conn (left) as Antipholus of Syracuse and Nick Cordileone (right) as his servant Dromio of Syracuse in The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s 2008 production of Comedy of Errors, directed by Stephen Fried. Photo: © Gerry Goodstein. Click for larger view View full resolution James Michael Reilly (center) as Dr. Pinch, the conjurer, and Derek Wilson (right) as Antipholus of Ephesus. Also appearing onstage are Michael Striano and Philip Mutz (back-left). The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s 2008 production of Comedy of Errors, directed by Stephen Fried. Photo: © Gerry Goodstein. [End Page 105] Although a comedy, the play commenced with a chilling, frightening scene. Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse, a vulnerable old man, was kneeling center stage at a wooden beheading block in the square. His unshaven face, shabby raincoat, dingy pants, and crumpled hat reflected his travels and travails. Being a Syracusian in Ephesus, Egeon’s life was about to end. Before him towered the Duke of Ephesus, who was dressed in a militaristic dictator’s outfit consisting of a khaki jacket and pants, red hat, and an elaborate jeweled gorget around his neck. Accompanied by an entourage of similarly-dressed soldiers, the Duke was a sobering and terrifying figure. Whereas Shakespeare limited Egeon’s stage presence to 1.1 and 5.1, Fried used Egeon’s reprieve to allow him to raise the funds to spare his life as the rationale for Egeon’s repeated appearances onstage throughout the production. The handcuffed Egeon...

Henpecked Husbands, Unruly Wives, And Royal Authority In Lydgate's <span xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" style="font-style:italic;">Mumming At Hertford</span>

John Lydgate's Mumming at Hertford is a performance piece of some 250 lines in which a group of henpecked husbands appear before the king to complain of their shrewish wives. It is one of the shorter pieces in Lydgate's oeuvre and probably was not well known amongst his contem poraries since it survives only in a single manuscript.1 In spite of its brevity and obscurity, the piece has drawn considerable praise from modern Lydgate critics. In his 1970 book on Lydgate, Derek Pearsall calls it one of the poet's unexpected triumphs.2 Similarly, Walter F. Schirmer's 1961 study of Lydgate asserts that the Mumming at Hertford reveals a talent for humour and satire to which [Lydgate] all too rarely gave expression.3 The basis of these critics' approval is primarily aesthetic, consisting of admiration (and some surprise) at Lydgate's ability to create good comedy, an accomplishment they attribute to the influence of Chaucer.4 Recent years have seen a flowering of Lydgate studies and, once again, the Mumming at Hertford has emerged as an object of interest. In her 2005 book?the first full-length study of Lydgate to appear in twenty years?Maura Nolan credits the Mumming at Hertford with a serious artistic purpose, arguing that it is deeply concerned with the genres of tragedy and comedy. Like Pearsall and Schirmer, Nolan observes the piece's numerous debts to Chaucer. She, however, does not read these as a lesser light's imitation of a comic genius, but rather as markers by which Lydgate signals his critique of Chaucer's tragic and comic modes.5 In spite of critics' interest in the Mumming at Hertford, and in spite of the widespread recognition of its roots in gender comedy, no one has yet considered it carefully in the context of the medieval gender comedy tradition, which runs from the Old French fabliaux of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, through Chaucer in the late fourteenth century, and into a variety of fifteenth-century English lyrics, performances, and tales. While scholars have noted Lydgate's debts to the genre, particularly to the gender comedy of Chaucer, they have not inquired into the particulars of

"Um Auto de Gil Vicente" and the Tradition of Comedy

Almeida Garrett (1799-1854) is Portugal's best-known Romantic writer. His 'Um Auto de Gil Vicente' (1838) was his first play for the newly founded Teatro Nacional in Lisbon. However, critics have had very little to say about this historical drama. There are Romantic elements in the play, but plot and characterization derive very clearly from the patterns established by the Roman dramatist Terence. Garrett uses these patterns to point to the difference between his work and that of two major writers of the sixteenth century, who both figure prominently in the play, Gil Vicente and Bernardim Ribeiro. Garrett's drama, though, subverts some of the conventions of neo-classical comedy. He avoids Terence's happy endings, and the clever servant who solves all the problems is a woman, Paula Vicente.

Shakespeare, Plautus and the Humanist Tradition

Wolfgang Riehle contends that recent scholarship has exaggerated theinfluence on Shakespeare of the native popular tradition, at theexpense of a full understanding of the importance that Roman, particularly Plautine, comedy would have had for an Elizabethan dramatist. Shakespeare is shown to have considered Plautus, as did the Renaissance humanists, a dramatist of great qualities from whom much could be learned. The study concentrates on Shakespeare's Comedy of Errorsand its two Plautine sources, the Menaechmi and Amphitruo. Riehle's approach reveals Shakespeare's relation to his sources and his idea of comedy in a new light. The later plays are examined in this context. Riehle also argues for the continuation in recognisable form of the New Comedy tradition throughout the middle ages and into the Renaissance.WOLFEGANG RIEHLE is Professor of English literature at Graz University; he studied English, German and Classical literature atTubingen, Durham and Munich.

"The Laughing Philosopher": Whitman's Comic Repose

Proposes that "Whitman in his later years enacted a comic 're-pose' beholden to a western tradition of comedy and a stoic ethos of 'playing one's part' in Nature's cosmic drama," and emphasizes the poet's "increasing dependence upon Stoic detachment" that "masked a level of anxiety the poet perhaps could hardly admit to himself."

Shakespeare’s Comic Rites by Edward Berry

Edward Berry, Shakespeare’s Comic Rites (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1984). x, 221. $34.50 (u.s.) The elusive connections between literature and life, art and history, and drama and ritual are the subject of this book. In examining the eight romantic comedies Edward Berry charts the course of lovers from courtship to marriage in light of the major rites of separation, transition, and incor­ poration, and combines, in most cases successfully, the different fields of anthropology, social history, and literary criticism. His indebtedness to Arnold van Gennep’s The Rites of Passage, Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process, Susanne Langer’s Feeling and Form, and Leo Salinger’s Shake­ speare and the Traditions of Comedy is always made clear. So too is his preference of C. L. Barber’s treatment of holiday “seasonal rites” in the comedies over Northrop Frye’s archetypal patterning of the green world in phases of preparation, license, and festivity. Just as he finds suggestive motivation in Salinger’s description of Shakespeare’s comedies as a lyrical, “ ‘emotional and imaginative experience, an inward metamorphosis’ ” (9), he favours Barber’s study of the “festive” movement through “release” to “clarification” leading to “ ‘a heightened awareness of the relation between man and nature’ ” (14), because both lend support to his thesis about Shakespeare’s comic rites of passage affecting the community as well as the individual lovers: Rites of passage . . . are both communal and personal; they mark a crisis in the. life of an individual and redefine his role in society. . .. The comedies work obliquely, suggesting psychological conflict and development through symbols, such as masks, magic, and dreams. And this is precisely the method of rites of passage. (15, 17) Although the cited instances of tribal customs, among the Cuna Indians and the Zulus, for example, are rarely as elucidating of the plays as the tantalizing snippets of Renaissance social history gleaned from Elizabethan and Jacobean account books, travel essays, autobiographies, marriage hand­ books, and apprentices’ journals, Berry does succeed in showing how Shake­ speare’s focus on the comedy of courtship and marriage not only recreates the social patterns of his age but participates in “one of the most ancient and universal patterns of human experience — that of rites of passage” (220). There are times, however, when Berry either overstates or simplifies issues. One is his attempt to locate the centres of ritual in Elizabethan society as residing in the court and church, by distinguishing between Elizabeth’s strategic use of the emotional power of ritual and the “more problematic” (22) rituals of religion. He proposes a very tendentious spec­ trum, situating Catholics and Puritans at either “ extreme” and Anglicans 211 struggling “to define a middle ground” (23). The Catholic position quali­ fies for the label, according to Berry, because it “stressed the efficacy of the sacraments and the value of ritual in drawing people together.” His proof of this “typical” position is an excerpt from an introduction to The Holie Ceremonies of Gods Church, which was an appendix to Laurence Vaux’s A Catechisme or Christian Doctrine. Mistakenly dated by Berry in 1599, this Recusant catechism, the work of a Manchester priest who later became an Augustinian monk, was first published in Louvain in 1567. Influenced greatly by Tridentine manuals, especially the work of Peter Canisius, Vaux’s catechism occupies a unique (not merely typical) place in catechetics as one of the first Catholic formularies in English. What is most sur­ prising is Berry’s neglect of Vaux’s clear, standard, though non-extreme definition of a sacrament itself as “a visible forme of an invisible grace, which is instituted of God for our Sanctification. In every Sacrament is an outward forme or maner, that wee may see with our corporall eyes: under the which lieth hidden an invisible grace that wee cannot see with our cor­ porall eies: which we must firmely beleeve.” 1 Surely such a definition relates to rather than opposes notions of sign and symbols, inward metamorphosis and psychological development. This instance of oversimplification is not as abstruse or tangential as it may appear. Not only has Berry moved too hurriedly over the whole issue of “ the history of ritual in...

George E. RoweJr. , Thomas Middleton and the New Comedy Tradition. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ii + 240 pp. $16.95.

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Thomas Middleton and the New Comedy Tradition by George E. Rowe, Jr.

Thomas Middleton and the New Comedy Tradition by George E. Rowe, Jr.