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Definition: comedy from Philip's Encyclopedia

One of the two main types of drama. It differs from tragedy in its lightness of style and theme and its tendency to resolve happily. It originated in early Greek fertility rites and, in modern usage, refers not only to a humorous play or film, but also to the growing tradition of stand-up routines. As theatre has developed over the centuries, the once clear division between the two dramatic forms has been blurred, as fusions and a variety of sub-divisions of the two have been developed. See also Aristophanes; Greek drama

comedy

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
literary work that aims primarily to provoke laughter. Unlike tragedy , which seeks to engage profound emotions and sympathies, comedy strives to entertain chiefly through criticism and ridicule of man's customs and institutions. Although usually used in reference to the drama (see drama, Western ; Asian drama ), in the Middle Ages comedy was associated with vernacular language and a happy ending. Thus, the term was also applied to such non-dramatic works as Dante's religious poem, The Divine Comedy. Dramatic comedy grew out of the boisterous choruses and dialogue of the fertility rites of the feasts of the Greek god Dionysus. What became known to theater historians as Old Comedy in ancient Greece was a series of loosely connected scenes (using a chorus and individual characters) in which a particular situation was thoroughly exploited through farce , fantasy, satire, and parody, the series ending in a lyrical celebration of unity. Reaching its height in the brilliantly scathing plays…
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History Ever since a naughty boy stood on a gardener's hose in the Lumière brothers' short L'Arroseur arrosé (1895), cinema laughter has helped people to forget their daily woes. Vaudeville supplied the first silent-screen comedians, as broad physical comedy - the pratfall, the custard pie fight, …
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Full text Article COMEDY

From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
There is no theory of comedy in Freud: still, there is the comic, of which Freud studies several genres (naivety; gesture; situation; caricature; joke; nonsense; parody). He approaches it through its difference from the witticism, which is linguistic and according to Lacan linked to the unconscious. …
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Full text Article comedy

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
literary work that aims primarily to provoke laughter. Unlike tragedy , which seeks to engage profound emotions and sympathies, comedy strives to entertain chiefly through criticism and ridicule of man's customs and institutions. Although usually used in reference to the drama (see drama, Western ; …
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Full text Article comedy

From The Macquarie Dictionary
comedies a play, film, etc., of light and humorous character, typically with a happy or cheerful ending; a drama in which the central motive of the play triumphs over circumstances and is therefore successful. comedies comedies that branch of the drama which concerns itself with this form of…
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Full text Article comedy

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Literary genre that aims to make its audience laugh. Drama , verse , and prose can all have a comic aim. Stereotypically, comedy has a happy or amusing ending, as opposed to tragedy , but it can also embody a far subtler structure and purpose. Traditional comedy, like tragedy, has human weakness as…
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Full text Article comedy

From A/V A to Z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms
MGM's Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), a...
A dramatic work characterized by a humorous tone, ranging from dark to light comedy and high to low comedy. Occasionally described as drama in disguise. According to Cary Grant, “Actors today try to avoid comedy because if you write a comedy that's not a success, the lack of success is immediately…
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Full text Article comedy

From Shakespeare's Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context
Renaissance comedy in general was deeply indebted to its classical precedents in the gentler ‘new comedy’ which replaced the broad social satire of the ‘old comedy’ of Aristophanes. The Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence followed the example of the Greek writer of comedies, Menander, blending…
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Full text Article comedy

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
a. A dramatic work that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict. b. The genre made up of such works. A literary or cinematic work of a comic nature or that uses the themes or methods of comedy. Popular entertainment…
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Full text Article COMEDY

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
I. Definition II. Ancient Greek III. Modern Global Comedy I. Definition To ask what comedy is looses a Pandora's box of wild questions, with slim hope of answers. We can reduce their gamut by acknowledging that the Eng. word's primary meaning is of a stage or film performance involving a course of…
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Full text Article Comedy

From A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
This has become the preferred mode for avant-garde art, in contrast to its antipode Tragedy, which belongs to traditional art. If Tragedy portrays what should not happen, one theme of Comedy is possibility not only with the materials of art but in human existence. It follows that many major…
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