Comedy and Tragedy

[Alexander III]

I wanted to have a little thread dedicated to the debate of Comedy versus Tragedy, or rather how stereotypically Tragedy is perceived as the higher art form; or how stereotypically for contrarionists how Comedy is defended as an equal if not greater form.

Aristotle set the precedent (or rather reaffirmed the Greek ethos) that Tragedy was the greater, that the tragic poet was a profound soul, compared to the less developed soul of the comic poet. This is a view which has largely persisted, right up to modernity. With Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy, reaffirming Aristotle, with his claim that tragedy is the more powerful and worthy art form as opposed to the comic; and his influence upon existentialism right up to Sartre and such with the focus on the exploration of the tragic. Sure there have been many great Defenses of the comic, namely Fielding's preface to Joseph Andrews, but they have remained a minority, and can also be slightly discredited by the notion that the majority were penned by comic writers themselves.

Some may object and quickly claim that Cervantes and his brainchild Don Quixote is a comic masterpiece ad is oft regarded as the greatest novel. Yet Don Quixote is a minority, for as the majority of us have learnt, the novel is merely a small piece of literature. There is the poem, the theatre, the essay and (while some may object) the philosophical book (are not many philosophy books? The Republic, The Confessions, Either/or, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, aesthetic masterpieces?) - amongst all of these there is also the novel. The greatest Play, the Greatest poem, how many of those contenders for the tittle are part of the comic? Don Quixote appears to be the exception which proves the rule.

Does not Western poesy begin with Homer and his two great tragedies, and thus generations of poets all followed suite. Virgil's Aeneid (with it's great 4th book being the most tragic as well), The Romantics and their celebration of the self through pathos. Right up to the 20th century with Modernism being kicked of by what? The great emptiness of the Great War, producing masterpieces of ethos like The Cantos or The Wasteland or even in a smaller scale the Duino Elegies. Once again many may easily cite men like Pope or Byron, but they seem to gain far less respect than their tragic counterparts, for few would place the aforementioned as candidates for the greatest poem.

Even in playwriting, had the comic been valued as an equal or superior to the tragic Moliere would be the name upon every directors lips, for as great as Shakespeare's comedies are in that department Moliere has no equal. But it is Shakespeare we value, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear - his great tragedies which have given him his position in contemporary thought.

The problem as I perceive it is that the Sublime is viewed as the pinnacle of art. And thus by said judgement the comic shall be inferior to the tragic in the production of the Sublime. But that is because the comic is not naturally inclined to produce the Sublime, it is the Ridiculous which the comic thrives on. Cannot the Ridiculous be and equal or even greater than the Sublime?

One might easily counted my affirmation with the response that it cannot, as taking our lives as an instance the Sublime emotion of grief at the death of a parent cannot be equalled by any feat of the Ridiculous. But may I object? Cannot this be because we see death and thus by counterpart life (as everything that Death is is a direct antagonist to all that is Life) Trough the predisposition lens of Ethos. As Socrates once mused (I know citing Socrates, I am obviously a great intellectual) I do not fear death nor view it as a tragedy, for I may safely assume that while many of us think of death as a tragedy, none of us have any reason to say so as none of us have experienced it and know not of what it is. When viewing life Through a different lens, understanding and also appreciating life and our individual selves as inconsequential beings in the vastness of existence, when we can smile while looking at the stars and think life is to serious to ridiculous to be taken seriously; When we no longer see death and by counterpart life through the lens of the tragic but instead through that of the comic, cannot the Ridiculous surpass the Sublime?

As more a more personal take on the subject. I find that in a world where a man can shed tears while alone, and yet rarely shall he laugh alone; in a world where there is a low demand for a tear and a high supply as opposed to the high demand of a laugh and it's low supply. The laugh is far more precious and so is that which can create it. And yet with this opinion of mine, I find the tragic, the Sublime to be of profounder aesthetic power. Maybe because I have grown up amongst wealth and love and know not what it means to have suffered in any true degree, or maybe because I simply cannot help but view death and thus life trough an unwanted lens of the tragic.

[mayneverhave]

People tend to be more struck, or moved, by great pathos, high emotional intensity usually associated with a fall. This applies in the contemporary world, where the average "consumer" definitely has no problem watching, and being entertained by, something like "The Hangover" but I doubt any of them would go so far as to place it above "The Godfather". Comedies tend to be light, fluffy, usually with an outrageous premise, or an extremely predictable plot, mostly the Romantic comedy. Films like "The Graduate" or "Some Like It Hot" seem exceptions to the argument that comedies should be dismissed as fluff, but "The Graduate" gets by on its heavy-existential feel, and "Some Like It Hot"? Well, it helps to have Billy Wilder directing.

Of course, that's distinguishing comedy and tragedy in the commonplace, as opposed to the academic sense, which would pull a far greater number of works under the banner of "comedy".

It really all depends on what the reader's expectations are, or what is their purpose for reading. Admittedly, the fall of Othello moves me in a way quite foreign from (and more profound than) my reaction to the mass wedding at the end of As You Like It, or the bringing together of the feuding would-be-lovers in Much Ado About Nothing. However, it would be a mistake to consider the two comedies (generally considered a part of Shakespeare's "High Comedies") less serious or of inferior quality in comparison to his tragedies. If one's interests in reading go deeper than mere passive amusement in the easily digestible and recognizable pathos of the fall of the tragic hero, than the comedies deliver up a bevvy of linguistic pleasures. For myself, in Much Ado About Nothing, the deferral of violence ("Think not on him till tomorrow; / I'll devise thee brave punishments for him") for another day, the mechanism of deceit and illusion for vastly different ends (Don Pedro's masked wooing of Hero for Claudio, Don John's slandering Hero, and all character's tricking Beatrice and Benedick), and the exploration of the fabric of civility and hospitality which only slightly cloaks the terrors of war, the violence of emotion, and the vastly different allotments of various people in society, all are just as interesting to me as Iago's playing the devil's part and leading Othello to ruin. Other works, like Ovid's Metamorphoses, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Joyce's Ulysses, are just as fascinating as The Aeneid, Pride and Prejudice, and The Sound and the Fury.

[kelby_lake]

I disagree that Moliere's comedies are better than Shakespeare's. They might fit the form of comedy better- Shakespeare's comedies tend to have darker elements, especially the problem plays- but they are of their time and place. Perhaps there has never been a satisfactory translaton of Moliere's plays, and that this has hindered his international reputation, but I wouldn't say they are superior to Shakespeare's.


As for the reason why tragedies are regarded more highly than comedies, I think that many individuals, at some points in their life, view their life as a tragedy. Most people would admit that they have one flaw which hinders them, and some people live in regret of 'the greatest mistake' of their lives. Basically, we're all a bit pessemistic, and we feel that things are often beyond our control.

[OrphanPip]

I'm not sure Shakespeare wrote the best comedies of the English renaissance anyway. Epicoene and The Alchemist by Ben Jonson are probably my favourites of the period. Middleton is pretty strong too with The Roaring Girl.

I think it's a bit silly to argue about one genre being better than another, they both operate off of different sets of conventions.

[stlukesguild]

Edmund Burke would suggest that tragedy rises to the highest level for the reason that it employs the "sublime". The sublime, as opposed to mere "beauty" involves the deepest human feelings... especially fear of death. I think many readers and art lovers confuse the expression of the darker emotions... melancholy, sadness, angst, horror, etc... with aesthetic merit. In discussing music with younger audiences, more often than not one finds that they are attracted to Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, etc... while they reject Mozart and Haydn as frivolous and lightweight. They confuse what is being expressed with artistic merit. Is it really that Mozart rarely plumbs the depths of the tragic like Beethoven or Tchaikovsky... or is it simply that Mozart rarely employs a minor key? Is Matisse but a lightweight painter because his paintings consistently express a joi de vivre as opposed to Picasso's tragedy, angst, and anger? Or is it just that he paints so fluidly and uses such beautiful and brilliant colors? In many ways it would seem that since Romanticism there has been this prejudice against beauty in favor of the sublime. The profound weight of the tragedy of Dostoevsky, Beethoven, Schubert, Van Gogh, Picasso, Baudelaire, Faulkner, McCarthy is far too often preferred to the glittering wit, humor, and brilliance of Swift, Calvino, Borges, Sterne, Oscar Wilde, Mozart, Faure, Debussy, Monet, Bonnard, Matisse, and Klee. Seriously, I don't think either direction is better than the other. Indeed, I agree with the old adage, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”

[Cunninglinguist]

Yes, well, Alexander, I don't think you understand how Aristotle defined the comedy and the tragedy. Not all comedy had to be, as it were, a joke. according to his classification system, the Aeneid was a comedy. Vaguely, a comic plot is one wherein mainly good things happen to virtuous characters and/or bad things happen to errant ones. In a converse manner, a tragic plot is one wherein mainly bad things happen to virtuous characters and/or good things happen to errant ones. These ideas are more fully expounded in Aristotle's Poetics. The idea that comedy had to be funny was installed far after the death of Aristotle, and your post seems to be riddled with the assumption that it was not. At least, Aristotle regarded "tragedy" as higher than "comedy" for different reasons than we do today.

That said, along with the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy is regarded as one of the best, if not the best, epics ever written; moreover, it's content is more near the "sublime" than the "ridiculous." Many of the most highly regarded movies now a-days have generally comic plots (For example, The Matrix, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Pirates of the Caribbean,). Tragedy, in truth, often doesn't go over well in the movie theaters ... Making an audience accept the death of a virtuous character is actually a lot more difficult than having your hero live "happily ever after," which is exactly what makes good tragedy harder than good comedy.

[Sano]

Yes, well, Alexander, I don't think you understand how Aristotle defined the comedy and the tragedy. Not all comedy had to be, as it were, a joke. according to his classification system, the Aeneid was a comedy. Vaguely, a comic plot is one wherein mainly good things happen to virtuous characters and/or bad things happen to errant ones. In a converse manner, a tragic plot is one wherein mainly bad things happen to virtuous characters and/or good things happen to errant ones. These ideas are more fully expounded in Aristotle's Poetics. The idea that comedy had to be funny was installed far after the death of Aristotle, and your post seems to be riddled with the assumption that it was not. At least, Aristotle regarded "tragedy" as higher than "comedy" for different reasons than we do today.

That said, along with the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy is regarded as one of the best, if not the best, epics ever written; moreover, it's content is more near the "sublime" than the "ridiculous." Many of the most highly regarded movies now a-days have generally comic plots (For example, The Matrix, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Pirates of the Caribbean,). Tragedy, in truth, often doesn't go over well in the movie theaters ... Making an audience accept the death of a virtuous character is actually a lot more difficult than having your hero live "happily ever after," which is exactly what makes good tragedy harder than good comedy.

Wow, I've never heard of that - I guess I'll move his Poetics higher on my "to read" list. Actually I've heard some claims that not all tragedies are sad - but this also implies that there could be funny tragedies. Are there any examples of that? Also, if they are so opposite, what does the terms "comedic tragedy" or "tragicomedy" mean? I've heard them some times, but now I can't figure out what they were supposed to mean.

[OrphanPip]

@Cunning The Aeneid is an Epic, Aristotle conceived of the arts in 4 forms: tragedy, comedy, epic, and lyric.

I have to disagree with your definition of comedy somewhat, which I think is more of a Renaissance understanding. For the Greeks comedy involved the "low" (read common people) and the improbable (it was important for the Greeks that high art mimic the reality). Artistotle also definitely considered the comical aspect important. Greek comedies did usually end with happy endings though, but Aristotle didn't seem to think that to be of central importance.

[Cunninglinguist]

@Cunning The Aeneid is an Epic, Aristotle conceived of the arts in 4 forms: tragedy, comedy, epic, and lyric.

I have to disagree with your definition of comedy somewhat, which I think is more of a Renaissance understanding. For the Greeks comedy involved the "low" (read common people) and the improbable (it was important for the Greeks that high art mimic the reality). Artistotle also definitely considered the comical aspect important. Greek comedies did usually end with happy endings though, but Aristotle didn't seem to think that to be of central importance.

If I have the time I'll find and quote some of the passages from Poetics...I don't remember him ever saying that the epic/lyric and the comic/tragic plot were/are mutually exclusive, as you suggest; and even if he did I wouldn't agree with him (and, apparently neither would Dante :D). I think, also, that we have to be wary of over-speculation about Aristotle's opinions on the matter because we're missing the second book (on comedy!) to Poetics.

Anyways, as you know, no one today defines comedy as above (today all comedy has to be laughable), but it has to be considered if we're going to discuss the history of it.


Actually I've heard some claims that not all tragedies are sad - but this also implies that there could be funny tragedies. Are there any examples of that?

Hamlet is very funny in certain parts;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8C4gPU_hEU

Shakespeare definitely provided the dais (and, I think, intended) for the actor to be comedic, though not all actors choose to be.


Also, if they are so opposite, what does the terms "comedic tragedy" or "tragicomedy" mean? I've heard them some times, but now I can't figure out what they were supposed to mean.

I think it's because the people who are making these terms up aren't following Aristotle's definition, but a modern one in which all comedy has to be funny.

[Heteronym]

I won't get into Aristotle since I haven't re-read him in years. But I'm suspicious of tragedy in modern-day terms. Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel is a great book for anyone who wants to learn to look at the history of literature through the lens of humor. But more importantly he, perhaps unwittingly, led me to see the tragic as just Man's way of taking solace from the misery and unfairness of life. By seeing life as tragic, as a narrative of solemn, high values, Man can vainly convince himself that life isn't absurd, irrational and pointless. A tragedy makes one cry at a virtuous man being unfairly killed; since we're moral creatures, this is easy to accomplish. Comedy can make one laugh at a virtuous man having his life torn apart: this is harder to achieve, since it goes against what we think is right.

When I think of how comedy can disrupt our assumptions about the world being a tragic place, I think of the ending of Madame Bovary. Emma has struggled against class, mores, family to find true love. Rejected by all her lovers, she ingests poison and slowly agonises to death. This should be a very tragic moment. But what is happening at the same time, outside Emma's bedroom window? A beggar is singing a bawdy song. The sacred and the profane are juxtaposed in an unforgettable image. Just because we think we're the center of the world, the world keeps spinning unchanged; just because we see our problems as special, the world doesn't even register them. A tragic woman dies and a beggar couldn't give a rat's ***.

So I put tragedy and comedy in these terms: tragedy reaffirms our values of what is right and wrong. We cry at the end of Romeo and Juliet because we naturally think lovers should live to enjoy their love. We cheer Raskolnikov at the end because we like redemption. We froth at the mouth at the end of 1984 because a good man has been brainwashed into loving a dictatorship, etc. We cry at the end of The Road because the good father didn't deserve to die, of course, after all he did for his soon. That's just not how altruism is repaid!

These are all predictable reactions.

Comedy dismantles all those values. Its tools - sarcasm, irony, absurdism, satire - can make us laugh at things we think we should be repulsed by. So an apocalyptic novel like Blindness can make you laugh at a world gone blind. A darkly humorous novel like The Trial sucks out all the pathos of Joseph K.'s death by having him, strangely, regret not having the courage to stab himself and having to let the policemen do it instead. It can make us laugh at the wanderings of an unrepentant murderer in The Third Policeman.

Comedy is dangerous and subversive. I think that's why authority figures don't like it at all. Authority thrives on seriousness. It's like Albert Cossery writes in - wait for it! - The Jokers; two men are discussing ways of disrupting an authoritarian regime, and one says: "it's important not to take the powerful seriously; above all, that's what they want; to be taken seriously." Comedy doesn't take things seriously, it minimizes their importance and power, trivialises them, it removes the stench of solemnity from things, forcing them to be seen in a new light. That's why I love a movie like Life is Beautiful, which many accuse of making fun of the Holocaust. And why shouldn't it?

I ended up writing more than I expected, but this is basically what I see to be the value of comedy to Mankind.

[Alexander III]

Yes, well, Alexander, I don't think you understand how Aristotle defined the comedy and the tragedy. Not all comedy had to be, as it were, a joke. according to his classification system, the Aeneid was a comedy. Vaguely, a comic plot is one wherein mainly good things happen to virtuous characters and/or bad things happen to errant ones. In a converse manner, a tragic plot is one wherein mainly bad things happen to virtuous characters and/or good things happen to errant ones. These ideas are more fully expounded in Aristotle's Poetics. The idea that comedy had to be funny was installed far after the death of Aristotle, and your post seems to be riddled with the assumption that it was not. At least, Aristotle regarded "tragedy" as higher than "comedy" for different reasons than we do today.

That said, along with the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy is regarded as one of the best, if not the best, epics ever written; moreover, it's content is more near the "sublime" than the "ridiculous." Many of the most highly regarded movies now a-days have generally comic plots (For example, The Matrix, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Pirates of the Caribbean,). Tragedy, in truth, often doesn't go over well in the movie theaters ... Making an audience accept the death of a virtuous character is actually a lot more difficult than having your hero live "happily ever after," which is exactly what makes good tragedy harder than good comedy.

Hmm I should have better expressed myself, when I say comedy and tragedy I mean in their modern sense, as was seen in the Elizabethan era. Otherwise we have utter confusion as The Frogs and La Divina Comedia all fall under the same label...which then makes the entire discussion redundant

[Alexander III]

I won't get into Aristotle since I haven't re-read him in years. But I'm suspicious of tragedy in modern-day terms. Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel is a great book for anyone who wants to learn to look at the history of literature through the lens of humor. But more importantly he, perhaps unwittingly, led me to see the tragic as just Man's way of taking solace from the misery and unfairness of life. By seeing life as tragic, as a narrative of solemn, high values, Man can vainly convince himself that life isn't absurd, irrational and pointless. A tragedy makes one cry at a virtuous man being unfairly killed; since we're moral creatures, this is easy to accomplish. Comedy can make one laugh at a virtuous man having his life torn apart: this is harder to achieve, since it goes against what we think is right.

When I think of how comedy can disrupt our assumptions about the world being a tragic place, I think of the ending of Madame Bovary. Emma has struggled against class, mores, family to find true love. Rejected by all her lovers, she ingests poison and slowly agonises to death. This should be a very tragic moment. But what is happening at the same time, outside Emma's bedroom window? A beggar is singing a bawdy song. The sacred and the profane are juxtaposed in an unforgettable image. Just because we think we're the center of the world, the world keeps spinning unchanged; just because we see our problems as special, the world doesn't even register them. A tragic woman dies and a beggar couldn't give a rat's ***.

So I put tragedy and comedy in these terms: tragedy reaffirms our values of what is right and wrong. We cry at the end of Romeo and Juliet because we naturally think lovers should live to enjoy their love. We cheer Raskolnikov at the end because we like redemption. We froth at the mouth at the end of 1984 because a good man has been brainwashed into loving a dictatorship, etc. We cry at the end of The Road because the good father didn't deserve to die, of course, after all he did for his soon. That's just not how altruism is repaid!

These are all predictable reactions.

Comedy dismantles all those values. Its tools - sarcasm, irony, absurdism, satire - can make us laugh at things we think we should be repulsed by. So an apocalyptic novel like Blindness can make you laugh at a world gone blind. A darkly humorous novel like The Trial sucks out all the pathos of Joseph K.'s death by having him, strangely, regret not having the courage to stab himself and having to let the policemen do it instead. It can make us laugh at the wanderings of an unrepentant murderer in The Third Policeman.

Comedy is dangerous and subversive. I think that's why authority figures don't like it at all. Authority thrives on seriousness. It's like Albert Cossery writes in - wait for it! - The Jokers; two men are discussing ways of disrupting an authoritarian regime, and one says: "it's important not to take the powerful seriously; above all, that's what they want; to be taken seriously." Comedy doesn't take things seriously, it minimizes their importance and power, trivialises them, it removes the stench of solemnity from things, forcing them to be seen in a new light. That's why I love a movie like Life is Beautiful, which many accuse of making fun of the Holocaust. And why shouldn't it?

I ended up writing more than I expected, but this is basically what I see to be the value of comedy to Mankind.

Precisely !

[JBI]

Edmund Burke would suggest that tragedy rises to the highest level for the reason that it employs the "sublime". The sublime, as opposed to mere "beauty" involves the deepest human feelings... especially fear of death. I think many readers and art lovers confuse the expression of the darker emotions... melancholy, sadness, angst, horror, etc... with aesthetic merit. In discussing music with younger audiences, more often than not one finds that they are attracted to Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, etc... while they reject Mozart and Haydn as frivolous and lightweight. They confuse what is being expressed with artistic merit. Is it really that Mozart rarely plumbs the depths of the tragic like Beethoven or Tchaikovsky... or is it simply that Mozart rarely employs a minor key? Is Matisse but a lightweight painter because his paintings consistently express a joi de vivre as opposed to Picasso's tragedy, angst, and anger? Or is it just that he paints so fluidly and uses such beautiful and brilliant colors? In many ways it would seem that since Romanticism there has been this prejudice against beauty in favor of the sublime. The profound weight of the tragedy of Dostoevsky, Beethoven, Schubert, Van Gogh, Picasso, Baudelaire, Faulkner, McCarthy is far too often preferred to the glittering wit, humor, and brilliance of Swift, Calvino, Borges, Sterne, Oscar Wilde, Mozart, Faure, Debussy, Monet, Bonnard, Matisse, and Klee. Seriously, I don't think either direction is better than the other. Indeed, I agree with the old adage, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”

Aristotle remarked on a Tragic Hero needing to be somewhat greater than the audience members, more than common if you will. Perhaps the failure of Sublime tragedy in Romantic vision has to do with the naive notions of French Revolutionary change and post-revolutionary confusion. I mean, you get tinges of it in Beethoven, for instance, who in many works seems to be composing tragic symphonies over heroic (epic) ones.

[Alexander III]

Aristotle remarked on a Tragic Hero needing to be somewhat greater than the audience members, more than common if you will. Perhaps the failure of Sublime tragedy in Romantic vision has to do with the naive notions of French Revolutionary change and post-revolutionary confusion. I mean, you get tinges of it in Beethoven, for instance, who in many works seems to be composing tragic symphonies over heroic (epic) ones.

But I seems to me that a good half of romantic art concerned the disillusionment and rebellion against the ideals of the french french revolution. There were individuals like Byron, and David(I am not quite sure is he is romantic or neo-classisist) and Chatueaubriand and Goethe who admired Napoleon and what the revolution and become. But just as many reject Napoleon such as Shelley and Pushkin and Foscolo. Rousseau's notion of the Noble Savage was completely re-examined by the romantics after the fiasco of the french revolution. Shelley's notion of the non-violent revolution was created due to his disillusionment with the masses, as he realized that they were unable to discern between necessary violence and gratuitous violence, and to prevent a frenzy of blood-lust in his perceived revolution it had to be non-violent. This is also seen clearly in Flaubert's (who is still writing in the romantic tradition) Sentimental education, when he describes the revolution of 48 the disillusionment with the "people" is quite clear and the rejection of the noble savage too.

The celebration of individual genius was a notion adopted by all romantics, but when it came to define individual genius there was no consensus. Byron and Goethe celebrated the genius of Napoleon, Shelley and Pushkin saw him as a tyrant not a genius. Shelley believes that individual genius is a trait of Shelley the artist. Others believe that it is common to every branch of human endeavor.