During the Middle Ages, the term "comedy" became synonymous with satire, and later with humour in general.Īristotle's Poetics was translated into Arabic in the medieval Islamic world, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and Islamic philosophers, such as Abu Bishr, and his pupils Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. It is in this sense that Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Commedia.Īs time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others the mask, for instance, that excites laughter is something ugly and distorted without causing pain. However, the characters portrayed in comedies were not worse than average in every way, only insofar as they are Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. Aristotle defined comedy as an imitation of men worse than the average (where tragedy was an imitation of men better than the average). The Greeks and Romans confined their use of the word "comedy" to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. Of this, the word came into modern usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time, passed through various shades of meaning. The adjective "comic" (Greek κωμικός kōmikós), which strictly means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage, generally confined to the sense of "laughter-provoking". The word "comedy" is derived from the Classical Greek κωμῳδία kōmōidía, which is a compound of κῶμος kômos (revel) and ᾠδή ōidḗ (singing ode). Tragic Comic Masks of Ancient Greek Theatre represented in the Hadrian's Villa mosaic Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms and focuses on the foibles of those who are falling in love. A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper-class society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its members. Similarly scatological humor, sexual humor, and race humor create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways. Other forms of comedy include screwball comedy, which derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations or characters, and black comedy, which is characterized by a form of humor that includes darker aspects of human behavior or human nature. Parody subverts popular genres and forms, critiquing those forms without necessarily condemning them. Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of their humor.
In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which engender dramatic irony, which provokes laughter. A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict.
The term originated in ancient Greece: in Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. Comedy (from the Greek: κωμῳδία, kōmōdía) is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium.