A farce, insofar as this study is concerned, is any afterpiece which has plot, dialogue, and characters. This embraces such widely scattered varieties as burlesque, dramatic satire, pastoral, comedy, and opera. This study embraces more than a hundred farces, the most popular ones of their day.

This thesis broaches an understanding of the perplexing concept of violence in the philosophy of Gillian Rose (1947-1995) by examining her sporadic appeal to the dramatic category of the Trauerspiel (mourning-play) and its opposite, comedy. Understood in their context as contrasting images of philosophy’s project in the aftermath of 20th century catastrophe, the dramatic categories of the Trauerspiel and comedy are shown to be critical conceptual resources for making sense of the function of violence in Rose’s late work. I begin by contextualizing Rose’s invocation of the Trauerspiel through an exploration of Rose’s engagement with Walter Benjamin’s study of 17th century German mourning-plays. In this 17th century context, the Trauerspiel dramatizes the melancholic aftermath of the Lutheran repudiation of “good works” and its implication in violence and political intrigue. Building on Benjamin’s intimation of the enduring significance of this link between melancholy and violence, I show how Rose uses the dramatic image of the Trauerspiel to characterize the predicament of postmodern philosophy. Philosophy, conceived as a Trauerspiel, interminably mourns the losses produced by the diremptions of modernity. By refusing to complete this work of mourning, however, the dirempted conditions of violence are left intact, thereby re-enforcing and reifying what is abhorred. Against this melancholic conception of philosophy as a Trauerspiel, Rose gives an account of philosophy as a comedy that figures violence, when reckoned with, as a precondition of education in the law. Through a comedic double movement, violence is understood retrospectively as a representable aspect of modernity’s dirempted history and prospectively as a necessary risk of thinking and acting in a dirempted world. By attending to this comedic aspect of Rose’s conception of violence I am afforded an interpretive position from which to criticize two prominent interpretations of Rose that over- and underemphasize the stakes of her investment in the question of violence. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis analyzes the concept of violence in the late work of the philosopher Gillian Rose (1947-1995) by examining her use of two dramatic categories: the Trauerspiel (or mourning-play) and comedy. Understood as contrasting accounts of the predicament of contemporary philosophy, the Trauerspiel and its opposite, comedy, function as a window into Rose’s understanding of the relation between philosophy and violence. I show how Rose appeals to the Trauerspiel to illustrate a problematic link between modern melancholy and violence, which is then used to demonstrate the implication of contemporary philosophy’s obsession with loss in violence. Rose’s account of philosophy as a comedy, by contrast, avoids the mournful reproduction of violence by figuring violence as a necessary part of acting in, and thinking about, the modern world. This emphasis on the “comedic” aspect of Rose’s conception of violence constitutes an original reading of Rose that challenges existing scholarly interpretations.

This doctoral thesis explores a subject falling in the interface between ancient Greek philosophy and literature. Specifically, I am concerned with common ground between the New Comedy of Menander and aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy. The thesis does not argue that the resemblance identified between the two writers shows the direct influence of Aristotle on Menander but rather thay they share a common thought-world. The thesis is structured around a series of parallel readings of Menander and Aristotle; key relevant texts are Menander’s "Epitrepontes", "Samia", "Aspis", "Perikeiromene" and "Dyscolos" and Aristotle’s "Posterior Analytics", "Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics", "De Anima" and "Poetics". My claim is that Menander’s construction of characters and plots and Aristotle’s philosophical analyses express analogous approaches on the subject of the relationship between knowledge and ethics. Central for my argument is the consideration that in Aristotle’s writings on ethics, logic, and psychology, we can identify a specific set of ideas about the interconnection between knowledge-formation and character or emotion, which shows, for instance, how ethical failings typically depend on a combination of cognitive mistakes and emotional lapses. A few years later than the composition of Aristotle’s school-texts, Menander’s comedies, as expressed in the extant texts, present to a wider audience a type of drama which, as I argue, reflects an analogously complex and sophisticated understanding of the interplay between cognitive or rational understanding and character or emotion. More broadly, Aristotle and Menander offer analogous views of the way that perceptions and emotional responses to situations are linked with the presence or absence of ethical and cognitive understanding, or the state of ethical character-development in any given person. Thus, I suggest, the interpersonal crises and the progress towards recognition of the identity of the crucial figures in Menandrian comedies embody a pattern of thinking about perception, knowledge and the role of emotion that shows substantial linkage with Aristotle’s thinking on comparable topics.

This thesis examines the differences between teen romantic comedy films marketed to Generation X teenagers in the 1980s and Generation Y teenagers in the 1990s, focusing on the presentation of gender roles, consumptive behavior, and family. The 1980s films are discussed within the social context of the Reagan era and the conservatism of the New Right. The 1990s films are examined as continuing a conservative sensibility, but they additionally posit consumption as instrumental to achieving an idealized romance. Romantic comedy is traditionally a conservative genre, but these films illustrate female liberation through consumption. The source of difference between the cycles of teen romantic comedy is attributed to the media's attempt to position Generation Y teenagers as ideal consumers.

Pesquisa realizada com o propósito de levantar uma discussão sobre o caráter pedagógico da comédia e em especial da comédia barroca alemã. Através de um levantamento teórico e uma breve análise do Schimpfspiel do autor Andreas Gryphius, intitulado Absurda Comica oder Herr Peter Squenz, no qual são investigadas sua linguagem e figuras cômicas, procura-se comprovar o valor moralizante do texto, utilizando-o como exemplificação da comédia no período, a fim de evidenciar, acima de tudo, seu papel como disciplinador social. / The research was carried out to raise a discussion about the pedagogical nature of comedy and, in particular the German Baroque Comedy. A survey and a brief theoretical analysis of Andreas Gryphius Schimpfspiel, which is entitled Absurda Comica Oder Herr Peter Squenz were my starting point. Its language and its comic figures were isolated, in order to pursue the moralizing value of the text, used as an example of comedy presented in the Baroque period. The goal was to highlight above all the comedy social role as a disciplinarian.

A presente dissertação divide-se em duas partes. Na primeira, analisamos O mercador, de Plauto, examinamos o que disse Aristóteles sobre o gênero cômico e estudamos as origens da comédia, com destaque para a Nea, com base no trabalho de George E. Duckworth. Partindo-se desse estudo, as características próprias da comédia, em geral, são apontadas, demonstrando-se a fórmula da comédia utilizada pelos autores antigos, apresentada neste trabalho, ao citarmos Northrop Frye. Após isso, focalizamos a estrutura da obra O mercador e, também, os tipos existentes na obra plautina, sobretudo os tipos femininos. A seguir, destacamos a relação amorosa entre o senex e a escrava-cortesã. Na segunda parte da dissertação, traduzimos a comédia, a partir do texto latino encontrado na edição de A. Ernout publicada pela Société d\'Édition \"Les Belles Lettres\". / This dissertation is presented in two parts: in the first one, we made an analysis of Plautus\'Mercator. To lay the foundation of such analysis, we considered what Aristoteles stated about comedy and we also retrace the sources of comedy, with particular emphasis on the Nea, by taking into consideration the study of George Duckworth. Still based on this work of Duckworth, we conducted a research on the identifying characteristics of comedy and, to do such, we also consulted Northrop Frye, whose work helped us to expose the strategies of comedy developed by the ancient authors. After this comprehensive study of comedy, we gave an analysis of the structure of the play and the characters, particularly the female ones, presented in Mercator. Eventually, the first part of our study is dedicated to examine the loving relationship between senex and his slave courtesan. In the second part of the dissertation, we present a translation into Portuguese of Plautus\' comedy from the original text, in Latin, which was found in A. Ernout\'s book published by the Société d\'Édition \"Les Belles Lettres\".

From Sam Taylor’s 1929 Taming of the Shrew to Kenneth Branagh’s 2000 Love’s Labour’s Lost, nine comedies have been filmed and released for the mainstream film market. Over the course of the twentieth century a filmic cycle developed. By the late 1990s, the films of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies included cinematic allusions to films produced and distributed in the 1930s. This cycle indicates an awareness of and appreciation for the earlier films. Such awareness proves that the contemporary films’ meaning and entertainment value are derived in part from the consciousness of belonging to a larger tradition of Shakespeare comedy on film. Recognizing the intertextuality of Shakespeare’s comedies on film challenges the notion that Shakespeare’s comedies do not merit the same critical attention as their tragic counterparts. The cinematic conversation between directors—as played out on screen—illustrates the relevance and cultural significance of Shakespeare’s comedy. This dissertation explores these comedic adaptations chronologically and offers analysis of the films as they enter the cinematic Shakespeare tradition. Each decade in which the comedies were produced reveals a unique view or understanding of the role of comedy in Shakespeare. For 1930s audiences, the three comedies offer innovative performances by big-name stars as some of them transitioned from silent films to talkies while others tried to flex their acting muscles. 1960s movie audiences saw Shakespeare comedy that was less about the theatrical tradition and more about cinematic realism and social relevance. Kenneth Branagh would move to capitalize on this approach and take populism to the next level with his two comedies in the 1990s. Branagh’s contributions to the comedy tradition proved to be both monumental and overconfident; however, the impact Branagh himself had on the field of Shakespeare on film is undeniable. His influence would inspire other directors (including Trevor Nunn and Michael Hoffman) who pay homage to Branagh stylistically and thematically. Recognizing the history of Shakespeare’s comedies on film allows us the opportunity to revisit and reexamine the comedies’ place on the Shakespeare-on-film canon by calling attention to what these films attempt to accomplish through cultural, social or cinematic means.

This thesis is asking whether the television series Community (2009-) can be defined as a Sitcom, combined with a look at how other genres that generally are considered to be non-comic are incorporated in the series and how those are identifiable as well as whether or not they compromise Community’s possible label as a Sitcom. In seeking to define this show’s place in its own genre I found that whilst Community does not follow the archetypal technical conventions of Sitcom, it still does follow some of its setups, tropes and ideas. It does not suffice as a classical Sitcom, but it does lean on some of the genres conventions and has not yet passed over the line where it would be part of a completely different genre. Instead I state that the series fits the term New Comedy, as devised by Antonio Savorelli, not a genre but a term representing the heightened use of metatextuality on four levels in Comedy. Thus Community suffices as a part of an evolved version of the Sitcom genre.

Racism persists individually and institutionally in the U.S. and race-based comedy prevails in media, accepted by diverse audiences as jokes. Media priming and Social Identity Theory theoretically ground this two-part experimental study that examines Latino participants' judgments of in-group (Latino) and out-group (White) alleged offenders in judicial cases after being primed with race-based stereotype comedy performed by an in-group (Latino) or out-group (White) comedian. First, participants read race-based stereotype comedy segments and evaluated them on perceptions of the comedian, humor, enjoyment, and stereotypicality. Second, participants read two criminal judicial review cases for alleged offenders and provided guilt evaluations. Importantly, a distinction was made between high and low Latino identifier participants to determine whether racial identity salience might impact responses to in-group and/or out-group members in comedy and judicial contexts. The results reveal that the high Latino identifiers found the race-based comedy segments more stereotypical than did the low Latino identifiers. Latino participants rated the comedy higher on enjoyment when the comedian was perceived to be a Latino in-group member as opposed to a White out-group member. The high Latino identifiers rated the White alleged offender higher on guilt than the Latino alleged offender after being primed with race-based comedy. Simply projecting in-group or out-group racial identity of comedians and alleged offenders with name manipulations in the study influenced how participants responded to the comedy material, and persisted in guiding guilt judgments on alleged offenders in the judicial reviews based on participants' Latino identity salience. A Latino comedian's position as popular joke-teller in the media overrides in-group threat, despite invoking in-group stereotypes in humor. Even with greater enjoyment expressed for Latino comedians' performing stereotypical race-based material, the tendency to react more harshly against perceived out-group members as a defense strategy to maintain positive in-group salience remained in real-world judgments on alleged offenders. Despite the claim that light-hearted comedy is meant to be laughed at and not taken seriously, jokes that disparage racial groups as homogeneous, simplistic, and criminal impact subsequent responses to out-group members in a socially competitive attempt to maintain positive in-group identity, to the detriment of out-groups.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 148-157). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.