Comedy

Catalog description

This course will explore theories of comedy and humor and examine some representative comedic works in drama, film, and fiction. We will begin with early theories of humor and laughter in essays by Henri Bergson, George Meredith, and Sigmund Freud and contrast their ideas with those of later writers, with special attention to Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of the carnivalesque. We also will read into formalist theories of comedy as dramatic genre, focusing primarily on Northrop Frye. Concurrently, in our literary readings, we will trace the development of comedy from its Greek and Roman stage origins, through the early modern era, and into the modern age, where we will expand our view from theatre to include cinema and the comic novel. Along the way, I expect that beyond understanding comedy as what makes us laugh and developing a sense of comedy as a distinctly recursive genre, we will also explore the comedic worldview as a modus vivendi--a way of being in the world. Our objectives, then, are to know the comic as a spirit and comedy as a genre, and to investigate what makes us laugh.