Tragicomedy - Wikipedia Tragicomedy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search "Tragicomic" redirects here. For the album by Vijay Iyer, see Tragicomic (album). Genre of drama and literature This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Tragicomedy" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Literature Major forms Novel Poetry Drama Short story Novella Genres Adventure Comedy Drama Epic Erotic Nonsense Lyric Mythopoeia Rogue Romance Satire Speculative fiction Tragedy Tragicomedy Media Performance Play Books Techniques Prose Poetry History and lists History modern Outline Glossary of terms Books Writers Literary awards poetry Discussion Criticism Theory (critical theory) Sociology Magazines  Literature portal v t e Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending.[1] Tragicomedy, as its name implies, invokes the intended response of both the tragedy and the comedy in the audience, the former being a genre based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis and the latter being a genre intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter. Contents 1 In theatre 1.1 Classical precedent 1.2 Renaissance revivals 1.2.1 Italy 1.2.2 England 1.2.3 Later developments 1.3 Postmodern tragicomedy in the United States 2 See also 3 References 4 External links In theatre[edit] Classical precedent[edit] Tragic Comic masks of Ancient Greek theatre represented in the Hadrian's Villa mosaic. There is no concise formal definition of tragicomedy from the classical age. It appears that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had something like the Renaissance meaning of the term (that is, a serious action with a happy ending) in mind when, in Poetics, he discusses tragedy with a dual ending.[2] In this respect, a number of Greek and Roman plays, for instance Alcestis, may be called tragicomedies, though without any definite attributes outside of plot. The word itself originates with the Roman comic playwright Plautus, who coined the term somewhat facetiously in the prologue to his play Amphitryon. The character Mercury, sensing the indecorum of the inclusion of both kings and gods alongside servants in a comedy, declares that the play had better be a "tragicomoedia":[3] I will make it a mixture: let it be a tragicomedy. I don't think it would be appropriate to make it consistently a comedy, when there are kings and gods in it. What do you think? Since a slave also has a part in the play, I'll make it a tragicomedy...—Plautus, Amphitryon[4] Renaissance revivals[edit] Italy[edit] Plautus's comment had an arguably excessive impact on Renaissance aesthetic theory, which had largely transformed Aristotle's comments on drama into a rigid theory. For "rule mongers" (the term is Giordano Bruno's), "mixed" works such as those mentioned above, more recent "romances" such as Orlando Furioso, and even The Odyssey were at best puzzles; at worst, mistakes. Two figures helped to elevate tragicomedy to the status of a regular genre, by which is meant one with its own set of rigid rules. Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio, in the mid-sixteenth century, both argued that the tragedy-with-comic-ending (tragedia de lieto fin) was most appropriate to modern times and produced his own examples of such plays. Even more important was Giovanni Battista Guarini. Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, published in 1590, provoked a fierce critical debate in which Guarini's spirited defense of generic innovation eventually carried the day. Guarini's tragicomedy offered modulated action that never drifted too far either to comedy or tragedy, mannered characters, and a pastoral setting. All three became staples of continental tragicomedy for a century and more. England[edit] This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (August 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) In England, where practice ran ahead of theory, the situation was quite different. In the sixteenth century, "tragicomedy" meant the native sort of romantic play that violated the unities of time, place, and action, that glibly mixed high- and low-born characters, and that presented fantastic actions. These were the features Philip Sidney deplored in his complaint against the "mungrell Tragy-comedie" of the 1580s, and of which Shakespeare's Polonius offers famous testimony: "The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individuable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men." Some aspects of this romantic impulse remain even in the work of more sophisticated playwrights: Shakespeare's last plays, which may well be called tragicomedies, have often been called romances. By the early Stuart period, some English playwrights had absorbed the lessons of the Guarini controversy. John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, an adaptation of Guarini's play, was produced in 1608. In the printed edition, Fletcher offered an interesting definition of the term, worth quoting at length: "A tragi-comedie is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some neere it, which is inough to make it no comedie." Fletcher's definition focuses primarily on events: a play's genre is determined by whether or not people die in it, and in a secondary way on how close the action comes to a death. But, as Eugene Waith showed, the tragicomedy Fletcher developed in the next decade also had unifying stylistic features: sudden and unexpected revelations, outré plots, distant locales, and a persistent focus on elaborate, artificial rhetoric. Some of Fletcher's contemporaries, notably Philip Massinger[5] and James Shirley,[6] wrote popular tragicomedies. Richard Brome also essayed the form, but with less success. And many of their contemporary writers, ranging from John Ford to Lodowick Carlell to Sir Aston Cockayne, made attempts in the genre. Tragicomedy remained fairly popular up to the closing of the theaters in 1642, and Fletcher's works were popular in the Restoration as well. The old styles were cast aside as tastes changed in the eighteenth century; the "tragedy with a happy ending" eventually developed into melodrama, in which form it still flourishes. Landgartha (1640) by Henry Burnell, the first play by an Irish playwright to be performed in an Irish theatre, was explicitly described by its author as a tragicomedy. Critical reaction to the play was universally hostile, partly it seems because the ending was neither happy nor unhappy. Burnell in his introduction to the printed edition of the play attacked his critics for their ignorance, pointing out that as they should know perfectly well, many plays are neither tragedy nor comedy, but "something between". Later developments[edit] Criticism that developed after the Renaissance stressed the thematic and formal aspects of tragicomedy, rather than plot. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing defined it as a mixture of emotions in which "seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure."[7] Tragicomedy's affinity with satire and "dark" comedy have suggested a tragicomic impulse in modern theatre with Luigi Pirandello who influenced many playwrights including Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard.[8] Also it can be seen in absurdist drama. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the Swiss dramatist, suggested that tragicomedy was the inevitable genre for the twentieth century; he describes his play The Visit (1956) as a tragicomedy. Tragicomedy is a common genre in post-World War II British theatre, with authors as varied as Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, John Arden, Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter writing in this genre. Vladimir Nabokov's postmodern fiction Pale Fire is a tragicomedy preoccupied with Elizabethan drama[9] Postmodern tragicomedy in the United States[edit] American writers of the metamodernist and postmodernist movements have made use of tragicomedy and/or gallows humor. A notable example of a metamodernist tragicomedy is David Foster Wallace's 1996 magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Wallace writes of comedic elements of living in a halfway house (i.e. "some people really do look like rodents), a place steeped in human tragedy and suffering.[10] See also[edit] Comedy-drama Outrapo Shakespearean problem play Theatre of the Absurd References[edit] ^ Dewar-Watson, Sarah; Eds. Subha Mukherji and Raphael Lyne (2007). "Aristotle and Tragicomedy." Early Modern Tragicomedy. Brewer. pp. 15–23. ISBN 978-1-84384-130-2. Retrieved 26 January 2012. ^ Poetics: XIII, End of 2nd paragraph, Trans: Bywater, Ingram, 1920 ^ Foster, Verna A. (2004). The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. p. 16. ISBN 0-7546-3567-8. ^ Plautus (2007). "Amphitryon." Qtd. in Introduction to Early Modern Tragicomedy. Eds. Subha Mukherji and Raphael Lyne. Suffolk, UK: DS Brewer. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-1-84384-130-2. ^ Farajallah, Hana Fathi; Kitishat, Amal Riyadh (2019-01-01). "The Self and the Other in Philip Massinger's "The Renegado, the Gentleman of Venice": A Structural View". Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 9 (1): 118. doi:10.17507/tpls.0901.17. ISSN 1799-2591. ^ Dyson, Jessica (2019-02-25), "Caroline tragedy", The genres of Renaissance tragedy, Manchester University Press, ISBN 978-1-5261-3826-2, retrieved 2020-10-27 ^ Paulus, Jörg. "Barbara Fischer / Thomas C. Fox, A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. 2005". Arbitrium. 25 (2). ISSN 0723-2977. ^ Ben-Zvi, Linda (1998-01-31), "Samuel Beckett's Media Plays", Modernism in European Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Beckett, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ISBN 978-1-4426-7731-9, retrieved 2020-10-27 ^ Canfield, J. Douglas (1984). "The Ideology of Restoration Tragicomedy". ELH. 51 (3): 447. doi:10.2307/2872933. ISSN 0013-8304. The radically disorienting play of frames in a postmodern fiction like Pale Fire-another text, it is worth noting, preoccupied with Elizabethan drama. ^ Goodman, Daniel Ross (2015-12-11). "Infinite Wallace: Tragedy, Comedy, and Faith in the Life of David Foster Wallace". Public Discourse. Retrieved 2020-10-27. External links[edit] Tragicomedy from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare Post-war British drama Wikiversity has learning resources about Collaborative play writing v t e Comedy Topics Comedian Comedic device Comedy festival Comedy troupe Comic timing Farce Humorist Humour Impersonator Impressionist Irony Joke Prank call Punch line Satire Visual gag Wit Word play Film Country American British French Italian Genre Fantasy Horror Parody Remarriage Romance Science fiction Screwball Sex Italian Silent Slapstick Stoner Theatre Country Europe Ancient Greek comedy Comédie-Française Comédie-Italienne Corral de comedias Theatre of ancient Rome Asia China Xiangsheng Hong Kong Mo lei tau Japan Kyōgen Manzai Owarai Rakugo Sarugaku Genre Boulevard theatre Comedy-drama Comedy of humours Comedy of manners Comedy of menace Commedia dell'arte Double act Improvisational Macchietta One-person show Pantomime Restoration comedy Sentimental comedy Comédie larmoyante Shadow play Shakespearean comedy Sketch comedy Spex Stand-up comedy Street theatre Theatre of the Absurd Tragicomedy Vaudeville Music and dance Ballad opera Cabaret Café-chantant Café-théâtre Comédie-ballet Comedy club Light music Music hall Musical theatre Opéra bouffe Opéra bouffon Opera buffa Opéra comique Operetta Revue Media Music Album Rock Hip hop Parody Musical comedians Novel Radio Television Mockumentary Roast Sitcom Subgenres Alternative Black Blue Character Christian Clown Cringe Deadpan (dry humor) Documentary Gallows High / low Horror Insult Observational Physical Prop Shock Sick Slapstick Topics Surreal Ventriloquism Zombie Category Portal Authority control GND: 4185839-6 LCCN: sh2001009137 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tragicomedy&oldid=997254038" Categories: Tragicomedy Ancient Greek theatre Drama genres History of theatre Humanities Literary genres Comedy genres Fiction Theatrical genres Tragedies (dramas) Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Articles needing additional references from May 2018 All articles needing additional references Articles that may contain original research from August 2020 All articles that may contain original research Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages Afrikaans Alemannisch العربية Azərbaycanca Башҡортса Беларуская Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎ Български Català Čeština Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Frysk Galego 한국어 Հայերեն Hrvatski Ido Bahasa Indonesia Ирон Italiano ქართული Қазақша Кыргызча Latviešu Lietuvių Magyar Македонски Nederlands 日本語 Norsk bokmål Polski Português Română Русский Shqip Slovenčina Slovenščina Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Тоҷикӣ Türkçe Українська Tiếng Việt 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 30 December 2020, at 18:03 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement