{"id":38,"date":"2019-12-12T00:21:56","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T00:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-jefferson-english102\/chapter\/tragedy-and-comedy-american-literature-i\/"},"modified":"2019-12-13T16:36:18","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T16:36:18","slug":"tragedy-and-comedy-american-literature-i","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-jefferson-english102\/chapter\/tragedy-and-comedy-american-literature-i\/","title":{"raw":"Tragedy and Comedy","rendered":"Tragedy and Comedy"},"content":{"raw":"
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Tragedy isn\u2019t Accidental<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

\u201cThat was such a tragic accident.\u201d\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\r\n

Tragedy is a balloon word, like \u201cculture\u201d or \u201cfreedom.\u201d\u00a0 It has been used in so many ways that its exact meaning is lost.\u00a0 I\u2019ll expect you to be more precise with it.\u00a0 Know its roots.\u00a0 Tragedy and comedy are complementary forms.\u00a0 Stemming from early drama (with its rituals), a tragic protagonist makes a choice which leads to their eventual, inevitable destruction.\u00a0 Conversely, comedy\u2019s choices are about marriage and sex.\u00a0 There is usually a marriage at the end of a comedy\u2014they are life-affirming in a positive way.<\/p>\r\n

Typically, tragic protagonists fall from on high and we enjoy watching this inevitable, choice-driven event while noticing the characteristic within them that led to it.\u00a0 In this way, tragedy is much like blues music, where we might feel joy at hearing that someone is \u201cdiggin\u2019 my potatoes\u201d (cheating on the singer with \u201chis\u201d woman).\u00a0 The Greeks called this catharsis<\/em>, a ritual purging (out both ends, grossly enough, but we politely think of the upper one).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What Tragedies Accomplish<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tragedies are life-affirming in a negative sense.\u00a0 The \u201cbody count\u201d at the end usually evokes \u201cpity\u201d and \u201cterror.\u201d Aristotle used these terms, and we still do today.\u00a0 And why do we feel good after a tragedy?\u00a0 Why, it didn\u2019t happen to us!\u00a0 That\u2019s one reason.\u00a0 Another is that we shared in someone\u2019s suffering, and this causes us to reflect on things.\u00a0 Are there many ways in which Americans communally share anything?\u00a0 How much more individualized are we now than we were 100 years ago?<\/p>\r\n

Genres and categories like tragedy and comedy are artificially applied to much modern literature, and to all NA literature.\u00a0 When a Mohawk writer is intentionally using tragedy, they are also using their Mohawk culture and mixing in elements from white culture, too.\u00a0 How are readers going to separate these threads?\u00a0 Is it even possible?\u00a0 Do you see what an interesting mess this provides for us as readers?\u00a0 It\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing that we can\u2019t get easy answers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Problems Using Terms like Tragedy<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Not only is tragedy a misused term, then, but when applied to another world literature\u2013like Native American literature\u2013it becomes problematic.\u00a0 If we can test some of these, we won\u2019t have to rely on problem terms like \u201ctragedy\u201d that much.<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019d like you to leave this lecture as a seeker for the tragic and the non-tragic in their properly literary senses, and not merely the pop culture idea of good\/bad, which is oversimplified.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What of Comedy, Then?<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Well, comedy is easy. . . it\u2019s about union, with most comedies featuring sexual union occurring offstage while the wedding guests joke about how long it will take till the wife starts cheating on the husband.\u00a0 It\u2019s a strange genre, really, with old people trying to create matches for the young, often involving their older friends marrying to maintain wealth and control.\u00a0 Critic Northrop Frye on comedy: \u201cA comedy is not a play which ends happily: it is a play in which a certain structure is present and works through to its own logical end [. . .]\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Frye\u2019s Use of Mythical Cycles\u2013and I\u2019m not talking Harleys!<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Frye continues, connecting comedy and tragedy with the workings of the four seasons.<\/p>\r\n

The mythical backbone of all literature is the cycle of nature, which rolls from birth to death and back again to rebirth. The first half of this cycle, the movement from birth to death, spring to winter, dawn to dark, is the basis of the great alliance of nature and reason, the sense of nature as a rational order in which all movement is toward the increasingly predictable . . . [T]ragedy [and] the history play (always very close to tragedy) . . . are always close to this first half. There may be surprises in the last act of a Shakespearean tragedy, but the pervading feeling is of something inevitable working itself out . . . Comedy, however, is based on the second half of the great cycle, moving from death to rebirth, decadence to renewal, winter to spring, darkness to a new dawn . . . This movement from sterility to renewed life is as natural as the tragic movement, because it happens. But though natural it is somehow irrational: the sense of the alliance of nature with reason and predictable order is no longer present. We can see that death is the inevitable result of birth, but new life is not the inevitable result of death. It is hoped for, even expected, but at its core is something unpredictable and mysterious, something that belongs to the imaginative equivalents of faith, hope, and love, not to the rational virtues (119-22).<\/p>\r\n

So we\u2019re often partly correct about these genres while perhaps missing the key workings of each.\u00a0 There!\u00a0 You are cursed to correct any newscaster who utters \u201cThat was a tragic accident!\u201d<\/p>\r\n

And if all this isn\u2019t strangely contingent enough, do some web searches to see how the original festivals of Dionysus worked out (with their Maenads) prior to the Greeks settling down and merely watching plays!\u00a0 See the connections?<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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\u201cDionysus Mosaic\u201d<\/a> by miriam.mollerus<\/a> <\/i> is licensed under CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cDionysus\u201d<\/a> by TheoJunior<\/a> <\/i> is licensed under CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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CC licensed content, Original<\/div>\r\n