DRAM 324 - European and American Drama: Comedy

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Samuel Johnson observed that comedy “has been particularly unpropitious to definers,” although Renaissance thinkers confidently identified it. Renaissance theories of comedy determined that the form presented the humorous events that befall ordinary people. Comedies concerned the small misfortunes–without painful consequences–of plebian characters written in colloquial prose. Modern drama has seen the line between comedy and tragedy diminish almost completely as distinctions between the serious and the ludicrous, pain and its absence, have been obliterated. Ionesco wrote that “comic and tragic are merely two aspects of the same situation, and I have now reached the stage when I find it hard to distinguish one from the other.” European and American Drama: Comedy explores the comic vision expressed in dramatic literature from antiquity to the present day. The class also investigates theories of comedy with special emphasis on what makes people laugh. Theoretical work includes writings by Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, Susanne Langer, Northrup Frye, Umberto Eco and others. Plays may include work by Aristophanes, Plautus, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Moliere, Sheridan, Wilde, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, Coward, Ionesco, Fo, Mamet, Albee, Frayn, Simon, Ludlum, MacDonal, etc. Ms. Walen.

Prerequisite(s): DRAM 221/DRAM 222.

One 2-hour period.