Matakuliah : G0302/Introduction to Literature
Tahun
: 2007
Materi pendukung
Pertemuan 13
comedy
• Comedy, Northrop Frye has said, lies between satire and
romance. Historically, there have been two chief kinds of
comedy—scornful comedy and romantic comedy,
laughing comedy and smiling comedy.
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Comedy and tragedy
• The most essential difference between tragedy and
comedy, particularly scornful comedy, is in their
depictions of human nature. Where tragedy emphasizes
human greatness, comedy delineate human weakness.
• Where tragedy celebrates human freedom, comedy
points up human limitation.
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comedy
• Because comedy exposes human folly, its function is
partly critical and corrective.
• Comedy reveals to us a spectacle of human
ridiculousness that it makes us want to avoid.
• We go to the theatre primarily for enjoyment, not to
receive lessons in personality or character development.
Nevertheless, laughter may be educative at the same
time that it is enjoyable.
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comedy
- Romantic or smiling comedy, as opposed to scornful
comedy, and as exemplified by many plays of
Shakespeare puts its emphasis upon sympathetic rather
than ridiculous characters.
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comedy
• The norms of comedy are primarily social.
• Comedy puts its protagonists always in the midst of a
group and emphasizes their commonness.
• We judge the comic protagonist by social standards, by
how well he adjusts to society and conforms to the
expectations of the group.
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comedy
• Comic plots are less likely than tragic plots to exhibit the
high degree of organic unity—of logical cause-effect
progression—that Aristotle required of tragedy.
• Plausibility, in fact, is not usually the central
characteristic of a comic plot.
• Conventionally comedies have a happy ending.
• The happy ending is, indeed, a convention of comedy,
which is to say that a comedy ends happily.
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melodrama
• Melodrama attempts to arouse feelings of fear and pity,
but it does so ordinarily through cruder means. The
conflict is an oversimplified one between good and evil
depicted in absolute terms.
• Most important, good finally triumphs over evil, and the
ending is happy. Typically, at the end, the hero marries
the heroine; villainy is foiled or crushed.
• Melodrama does not provide the complex insights of
tragedy. It is typically escapist rather than interpretative.
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farce
• Farce, more consistently than comedy, is aimed at
rousing explosive laughter. But again the means are
cruder. The conflicts are violent and usually at the
physical level.
• Plot emphasized at the expense of characterization,
improbable situations and coincidence at the expense of
articulated plot.
• Absurdity replaces plausibility. Coarse wit, practical jokes
and physical are staples.
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