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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Comedy'
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Friedman, Sam. "Comedy and distinction." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/28072.
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Comedy plays an increasingly central role in British cultural life. Defying the recent economic downturn, it has grown into a booming multi-million pound industry, both on TV and on the live circuit. Despite this, sociology has traditionally afforded comedy little scholarly attention. Indeed, the art form has been largely omitted from large-scale sociological studies of British cultural production and consumption. Even in the most comprehensive assessment of British cultural tastes, Bennett et al's (2009) highly significant Culture, Class, Distinction, comedy was either ignored or defined problematically as a 'middlebrow' television sub-genre. The central aim of this thesis is to plug this conspicuous gap in the literature. In particular, it aims to examine the patterning of contemporary British comedy taste and understand how this relates to general patterns of socio-cultural division and inequality. Drawing on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews collected at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it argues that comedy now represents an emerging field for younger generations of the culturally privileged to activate their cultural capital resources. Using the innovative methodological instrument of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), it shows that such individuals carefully select and reject forms of British comedy, favouring the most legitimate 'highbrow' items and deliberately snubbing the most 'lowbrow'. However, unlike most studies of cultural capital and taste, the thesis finds that field-specific 'comic cultural capital' is mobilised less through taste for certain 'objects' of comedy and more through the expression of rarefied and largely 'disinterested' styles of comic appreciation. In short, it is the embodied currency of possessing a 'good' sense of humour, rather than certain objectified comedy preferences, that most distinguishes the privileged in the field of comedy. Such evidence of comedy taste functioning as cultural capital is significant because it challenges recent suggestions that the British are becoming increasingly culturally tolerant and omnivorous. Instead, in the case of comedy, this thesis finds that taste acts as a powerful marker of cultural and class identity. Eschewing the kind of openness described in other cultural areas, comedy audiences make a wide range of negative aesthetic, moral and political judgments on the basis of comedy taste, inferring that one's sense of humour reveals deep-seated aspects of their personhood. Reflecting on this, the thesis argues that future analysis of popular cultural consumption must be willing to examine not just taste for specific items of culture, but also the accompanying styles of appreciation that frame consumption. It is here, in the specific way culture is consumed, that it is possible to discern how contemporary cultural forms are implicated in the redrawing of class boundaries and the pursuit of distinction.
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Lüssmann, Nina. "Persönlichkeitsschutz und "Comedy"." München M-Press Meidenbauer, 2007.
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Stewart, Nicholas. "Abstraction and comedy." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2013. http://research.gold.ac.uk/9922/.
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The thesis, consisting of an extended artwork (Toy Zoo) and a theoretical text, aims to explore a concept of abstraction and relate this concept to an affect of comedy. The proposal of the thesis is that abstraction, looked at in a proper way, is funny. Abstraction is imagined not as the absence of ‘content’ or the generalization of form, but as a condition of language occasioned by a categorical loss, the loss of the ground that attaches meaning to a thing. The work takes this dissonance in language as its subject-matter. In a series of photographic images, representations of mental or conceptual objects whose mode of representation alters the meaning of the term, it presents abstraction not as a formal reduction or the presentation of a higher order but as the historical view of a void subject-position. Its argument is that the view from this position is comic. The text develops a concept of abstraction from Hegel’s description of ‘the abstract work of art’. This ‘absolute’ abstraction, a condition in society to which art responds, is the premise through which various forms of abstract production, in art and elsewhere, are read. The generic forms of the epic, tragedy and comedy, as analyzed by Hegel, provide models that are applied in the context of ‘real abstraction’ and to certain positions in art. An analysis of value in capital aims to identify the logic of this form of production with the structure of tragedy. Against this ‘ready-made’ abstraction of modernity, the non-dialectical relationship of abstract necessity and the individual, the text argues for a form of comedy. Comedy, as a genre in art, proposes a subject-position that, recognizing itself in abstraction, recognizes abstraction not, as in ‘real abstraction’, as necessity but as the condition of its own freedom.
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McRae, Calista Anne. "Lyric as Comedy." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493550.
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Although the twentieth-century lyric poem might seem to intensify a genre of sentiment into a genre of meditative or tumultuous solipsism, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, A. R. Ammons, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Terrance Hayes write lyrics that are funny, on several planes. Each of these poets enacts a self-revealing comedy of the mind and its often labored, blinkered, or illogical cognitive processes; each also creates a comedy of style, where language and form exceed and confound paraphrase. This thesis brings out such comedies, arguing that lyric is a livelier, more paradoxical, and certainly less solipsistic genre than is yet recognized. While most theories of the comic emphasize superiority, incongruity, or subversion, lyric poetry suggests that comedy originates in something miraculously apt and failed, at once: the comedy of lyric springs from deflected, or misdirected, perfection, and from the miraculous achievement of a less-than-sublime end. Berryman, who sets formal wildness in a fixed stanza, provides an opening instance of how comedy balances between the decidedly flawed and the marvelous. Lowell’s incongruities, which undermine every quality that threatens to dominate a poem, surprise by the unlooked-for harmonies they produce. Ammons turns his concerns about inarticulate failing into a comedy of ineptness, enacting the workings of an inconsistent mind with precision. Brock-Broido’s humor appears as utter doubleness, requiring that we see the beautiful and the ludicrous together; her comedy does not extinguish her Romantic postures, but suffuses them. Hayes enacts the luck of the erratic, associative mind, as it takes in, is altered by and transforms its surroundings: disparate styles, tones, devices, and allusions come together to convey something beyond their semantic point.English
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Olson, J. Kirby. "Klossowski and comedy /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9483.
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Turner, Matthew R. "Signs of Comedy: A Semiotic Approach to Comedy in the Arts." Ohio : Ohio University, 2005. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1126899710.
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Miles, Sarah N. "Strattis, tragedy, and comedy." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2009. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10887/.
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This study comprises a translation, textual commentary, and discussion of the fragments of the Old comic dramatist Strattis which engage with tragedy. It forms the centre of a wider examination of the art of paratragedy and tragic parody in Old Comedy because paratragedy represents the earliest reception of tragedy and one that is contemporary with the initial live performances of tragic plays. Ancient and modern scholarship alike has viewed Aristophanes as the dominant figure in the art of paratragedy and tragic parody. Strattis, a contemporary of Aristophanes, was active in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC and the fragments of his comedies indicate a sustained and wide ranging interaction with contemporary tragedy which is rivalled only by Aristophanic comedy. This is particularly remarkable since the extant corpus of Strattis numbers less than ninety fragments. This work explores the phenomenon of paratragedy beyond Aristophanic paratragedy and raises awareness of the importance of Strattis in this respect. It begins with a survey of paratragedy in other non-Aristophanic fragments of Old Comedy and it examines the various ways that comedy engages with tragedy, indicating the depth and breadth of paratragedy in comic fragments. This provides the foundations on which to examine the fragments of Strattis through a text, translation and commentary on those fragments that engage with tragedy. It leads to a discussion of the works of Strattis overall for their use of tragedy and myth, which allows us to note characteristics of Strattis’ work. This enables a comparison of the paratragedy in the comedies of Strattis and Aristophanes which allows us to reassess the uniqueness of Aristophanic paratragedy and to consider reasons for the popularity of paratragedy in the late fifth century BC.
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Robinson, Rebecca Grace. "Scottish television comedy audiences." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1177/.
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This study explores how Scottish people feel about representations of Scottishness in contemporary television comedy. The thesis is in two related parts, articulating an exploration of genre, comedy and Scottish television texts with the theory, methodology and analysis of empirical audience research. The thesis begins by exploring how current television comedy is poorly served by critical literature beyond notions of genre although this field of study too fails to indicate significant contemporary permeabilities between comedy sub-genres, and between comedy and other kinds of leisure shows. The second chapter explores historical approaches to Scottish cultural criticism and literary myths (Tartanry, Kailyardism, Caledonian anti-syzygy, Clydesidism) and sets these against contemporary mythologising by individual Scottish comedy practitioners. The second half of the thesis marks a shift from textual studies toward audience research, and in particular develops a discussion about the problematics of researching comedy and audiences qualitatively. The first part of the second half is a literature survey of selected examples of audience research which is translated from theory and epistemology, to methodology and technique in the next section which comprises a discussion of the model for the empirical data collection. The next section presents data from a quantitative survey and qualitative focus-group discussions. The last part of the second section interprets the data through triangulation although this is limited by lack of comparable critical materials. The whole attempts to explore concepts of national identity in Scottish television comedy with audiences, but also develops the additional problematic of empirical quantitative research and comedy themes.
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Dow, Stephanie B. "Prostitution in city comedy." Thesis, University of York, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.399631.
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Collings, Rebecca. "Shedding light on dark comedy : humour and aesthetics in British dark comedy television." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2015. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/59450/.
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The term ‘dark comedy’ is used by audiences, producers and academics with reference to an array of disparate texts, yet attempts to actually define it perpetuate a sense of confusion and contradiction. This suggests that although there is a kind of comedy that is common enough to be widely noted, and different enough from other types to require separation, how and why this difference can be perceived could be better understood. Accordingly, I investigate what is enabling the recognition and distinction in respect of British dark comedy programmes, and use this as a basis for considering how this type of comedy works. I argue that the programmes may be distinguished primarily by aesthetic features, placing their rise on British television in a broader context of aesthetic trends towards a display of visual detail, spectacle, and excess that puts the private and the taboo on greater show. Using the theories of Freud, Bakhtin, and Bergson about taboo, the uncanny, the grotesque, and the appearance of mechanical actions in humans, I examine in detail examples of British comedy television programmes that are typically referred to as ‘dark’, demonstrating their consistent depiction of subjects that are often repressed or avoided, particularly those around which taboo restrictions and prohibitions have evolved (such as violence and death, illness, and transgressive sexuality). These areas are strongly linked with the body and physicality, and are also ones which occasion negative feelings of unease and denial that are connected to concerns about mental and corporeal fragility and fallibility. I conclude therefore that dark comedies provide a space where viewers may confront and ultimately minimise fears surrounding the human condition, enabling a ‘safe’ exploration of them that can be enjoyed as humorous.
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Andresen, Niclas. "Flouting the maxims in comedy : An analysis of flouting in the comedy series Community." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-31687.
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This paper explores how flouting of the Gricean maxims is used to create comedy in the television series Community. The aim of the paper is to find out what maxims are flouted the most to create comedy and what maxims the different characters flout in order to create comedy. The paper examines the use of flouts in different situations and explores in what situations the different characters flout the maxims for comedy. The paper is based on transcription of eight episodes of the series. The results show that the maxim of quantity was flouted most often, and some characters used more flouts than others. These results suggest that the use of flouts has to do with their different personalities, which is why some characters did not use as many flouts in order to create comedy, since it would not be in line with their personality.
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Bond, John A. "Reconcilable differences, a dark comedy." FIU Digital Commons, 2001. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1731.
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Reconcilable Differences is the story of Miami radio host Adam Painter. Confused about relationships, Adam cancels his wedding and, under the guidance of his bad-boy best friend, delves into the demi-monde inhabited by strippers and hookers. On the air he begins to examine how men and women interact. Adam explores the night world, moving from a connection with its denizens through his talk show to direct experience of its license and loneliness. He fails miserably in his clumsy efforts with women and is fired, sued and arrested. An unlikely, unwilling rebel, Adam confronts change and stumbles almost truculently toward self-discovery. This picaresque novel is told in the third person closely attached to the protagonist. The time scheme covers a thirteen-week radio ratings period. The story encompasses the worlds of radio and the sex industry, using South Florida settings to re-inforce character, plot and theme.
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Carey, Stephen Joseph. "Comedy in James Joyce's Ulysses." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:80539d29-5f34-44af-b2a6-265d85000258.
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The comic in Ulysses needs more attention. The few studies that exist disregard the problems: the adoption of assumptions which limit discussion, the inconsistent terminology, the lingering prejudice regarding comedy as inferior to tragedy. This study begins by examining the common assumption that comedy in Ulysses is either a restraint on Joyce's saeva indignatio, or an affirmation of life; and then looks at the difficulties of comic criticism. Chapter two considers modern comedy, distinguishes three schools of theory, and indicates how these will be considered in relation to Ulysses. Chapter three, countering the assumptions observed in chapter one, discusses the book's refusal to indulge the reader's desire for certainty, illustrating this with a criticism of Kenner's conception of Joycean irony and Goldberg's reading of the 'Nausicaa' episode. Chapter four examines Mulligan: "in risu veritas: for nothing so reveals us as cur laughter" (Joyce). Using Freud's study of aggressive jokes, it works backwards from 'Circe,' where Mulligan is revealed in his true (motley) colours. Chapter five evaluates Bloom's comic/ heroism, working with Bergson's study of social laughter and against Darcy O'Brien. The final chapter considers farce, particularly in 'Cyclops' and 'Circe,' using Bergson's body-as-machine theory and Bakhtin's study of the medieval carnival in Rabelais and his World<.em>.
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Hodson, Richard J. "Caroline town comedy 1628-1642." Thesis, University of York, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.251792.
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Bown, Alfie. "Eventual laughter : Dickens and comedy." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2014. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/eventual-laughter-dickens-and-comedy(b53f285d-bac9-43c8-827f-e63609226ea6).html.
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This thesis attempts to redress the drought of work on Dickens on comedy, which is surprising considering how often Dickens is thought of as a comic writer. The thesis uses Dickens to demonstrate problems with and resistance to existing theorizations of laughter, and attempts to develop a new way of thinking about laughter through Dickens. The thesis begins with a theoretical section, which is a discussion of existing discussions of laughter followed by an attempt to develop a new way of thinking about laughter by making use Alain Badiou’s concept of the ‘event.’ The thesis then moves to Section Two, in which these ideas are discussed alongside Dickens’s novels. Chapter Four attempts to show in a general way how Dickens and these discussions of laughter belong together, and how a certain moment in the nineteenth century that Dickens was a unique part of shows that new ways of discussing laughter are needed. Chapter Five argues that laughter in Dickens is not natural or spontaneous but part of constructing an idea of natural spontaneity. Pickwick Papers, it is argued, is the novel of retroactive causes, showing how laughter can create ideas of ‘nature’ which then appear to explain social behaviour such as laughter itself. Chapter Six tackles the relationship between laughter and anxiety. It argues that laughter creates order by ‘dealing’ with anxiety, but that this order it produces is profoundly unstable and has new anxieties. Barnaby Rudge is the novel which shows this in its particular historical context. The final chapter argues that Dickens’s writing can be called ‘comic’ in the terms that have been established throughout the thesis. Discussing Great Expectations, it argues that laughter is a plotting force that creates narratives and structures. Finally, the conclusion discusses changes that may have happened to laughter in the nineteenth century and what it means to find ourselves laughing at Dickens’s texts today.
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Schlossman, Beryl. "Joyce's catholic comedy of language /." Madison ; London : University of Wisconsin press, 1985. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34923288d.
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Hobe, Sara [Verfasser]. "Hippocratic medicine in aristophanic comedy." Freiburg : Universität, 2018. http://d-nb.info/1167683048/34.
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Elson, Kate Christie. "Mental illness in American comedy." Thesis, Boston University, 2013. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/12095.
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Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston UniversityThe goal of this thesis is to explore the subject of mental illness in current American comedy films. Its focus centers upon comedic depictions of two classes of diseases: those within the category of Anxiety Disorders and Clinical Depression and related illnesses. Further, I discuss differences between depictions ofthe two. This thesis also details the cultural importance of the comedic genre in America and the dissonance between the genre's rigid structure, the nature of mental illness and our current lifestyle. It also explains our nation's complex and at times contradictory relationship with mental illness as a cultural and social phenomenon and illustrates how these contradictions play out within the entertainment industry. Lastly, my focus centers upon the ways in which America's dominant ideologies clash with the reality experienced by mental illness sufferers and discusses film's role both in perpetrating pre-existing ideologies and in challenging them by creating new perspectives.
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Weisl-Shaw, Andreea Marina. "The comedy of didacticism and the didacticism of comedy in medieval Spanish and French comic tales." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608536.
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Carson, Johnny. "How to write comedy for radio." [Lincoln, Neb.] : University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2007. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/theaterstudent/1/.
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Cheung, Man-hon Michael, and 張文瀚. "Toward a theory of Chinese comedy." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1989. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31949393.
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Quirk, Sophie. "Stand-up comedy : manipulation and influence." Thesis, University of Kent, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.589966.
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This thesis interprets the craft of stand-up comedy as a senes of manipulations. In a medium where interaction with the audience IS often unruly, manipulation IS frequently used to maintain the performer's control over his audience, and to persuade them to laugh. Comedians may also go beyond the immediate manipulation of response to have a more significant influence, persuading audiences to subvert their usual standards of morality, and shaping or re-shaping their opinions and attitudes. By examining the work and methodology of practitioners across the current British alternative stand-up comedy scene, I aim to show some of the common manipulations used by stand-up comedians, and to demonstrate the possibilities that this medium has for political efficacy. I argue that stand-up comedy plays a significant role in influencing the attitudes and opinions of individuals, and in negotiating wider social norms.
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Doyle, Anne-Marie. "Shakespeare and the genre of comedy." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/177.
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Traditionally in the field of aesthetics the genres of tragedy and comedy have been depicted in antithetical opposition to one another. Setting out from the hypothesis that antitheses are aspects of a deeper unity where one informs the construction of the other’s image this thesis questions the hierarchy of genre through a form of ludic postmodernism that interrogates aesthetics in the same way as comedy interrogates ethics and the law of genre. Tracing the chain of signification as laid out by Derrida between theatre as pharmakon and the thaumaturgical influence of the pharmakeus or dramatist, early modern comedy can be identified as re-enacting Renaissance versions of the rite of the pharmakos, where a scapegoat for the ills attendant upon society is chosen and exorcised. Recognisable pharmakoi are scapegoat figures such as Shakespeare’s Shylock, Malvolio, Falstaff and Parolles but the city comedies of this period also depict prostitutes and the unmarried as necessary comic sacrifices for the reordering of society. Throughout this thesis an attempt has been made to position Shakespeare’s comic drama in the specific historical location of early modern London by not only placing his plays in the company of his contemporaries but by forging a strong theoretical engagement with questions of law in relation to issues of genre. The connection Shakespearean comedy makes with the laws of early modern England is highly visible in The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew and the laws which they scrutinise are peculiar to the regulation of gendered interaction, namely marital union and the power and authority imposed upon both men and women in patriarchal society. Thus, a pivotal section on marriage is required to pinion the argument that the libidinized economy of the early modern stage perpetuates the principle of an excluded middle, comic u-topia, or Derridean ‘non-place’, where implicit contradictions are made explicit. The conclusion that comic denouements are disappointing in their resolution of seemingly insurmountable dilemmas can therefore be reappraised as the outcome of a dialectical movement, where the possibility of alternatives is presented and assessed. Advancing Hegel’s theory that the whole of history is dialectic comedy can therefore be identified as the way in which a society sees itself, dramatically representing the hopes and fears of an entire community.
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Bakola, Emmanuela. "Cratinus and the art of comedy." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2006. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1445304/.
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Cratinus, whom postclassical antiquity canonised alongside Aristophanes and Eupolis as one of the triad of the greatest poets of fifth-century Comedy, represents a period of the genre for which our knowledge is very limited. This thesis offers a comprehensive overview for this author and his position in the genre of Greek Comedy. After an introductory section, it goes on to examine Cratinus' comic art from five different angles, in five chapters. The first chapter sheds light on Cratinus' comic persona as it emerges from his plays, and demonstrates its central role in Cratinus' intertextual dialogue with his rivals, especially Aristophanes. It shows that authorial intervention and authorial self-presentation was a much more extensive, complex and fundamental phenomenon in the genre of Old Comedy than a straightforward reading of the extant Aristophanic plays might suggest alone. The following two chapters examine Cratinus' exploration of and engagement with other dramatic genres. Chapter II demonstrates how one of Cratinus' comedies, Dionysalexandros, operated throughout by cross-generic play with satyric drama. By discussing material from extant and fragmentary comedy, as well as vase-painting inspired by dramatic productions, it goes on to show that comic poets and especially Cratinus were actively exploring the possibilities of cross-fertilisation between comedy and satyr play. Through examination of four of Cratinus' comedies, chapter III demonstrates that engagement with tragedy did not interest only Aristophanes, but was a major feature in Cratinus' comedy, too. This chapter also discusses the position that Aeschylus occupies in Cratinus and demonstrates, in particular, how fifth-century perceptions of Aeschylus' poetic style influenced Cratinus' own self-portrayal. Chapter IV looks at Cratinus' manner of composing his plots in several layers. In many of his comedies, mythical, topical and drama-derived plot elements intertwine freely, so that Cratinus' plots often develop along several strands. The demonstration of Cratinus' multi-layered style of composition entails challenging the modern classification of some of his mythical comedies as 'political allegories' and offering an alternative model of reading them, which coheres more with other aspects of the poet and the genre of Old Comedy. The last chapter of the thesis discusses certain dramaturgical and performative aspects of Cratinus' comedies, such as costume and disguise, theatrical properties and machinery and use of dramatic space. It also explores how Cratinus' use of imagery and personification was realised in performance and shaped the dramatic action. The thesis ends by offering a new edition of the papyrus summary of Dionysalexandros (POxy 663) based on argumentation and papyrological observations offered in several of its chapters.
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Lewis, Melinda Maureen. "Renegotiating British Identity Through Comedy Television." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245469847.
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Rainey, Kenneth Richard III. "Cross-Cultural Humor Through Comedy Films?" The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1525141452462223.
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Sands, Zachary Adam. "Film Comedy and the American Dream." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1483612711940071.
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Ritchie, Christopher. "Stand up comedy and everyday life." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299784.
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Rich, Laura Brooke. "Language and power in Roman comedy." Thesis, [Austin, Tex. : University of Texas Libraries, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2009-05-157.
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Cheung, Man-hon Michael. "Toward a theory of Chinese comedy." [Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong], 1989. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B12754493.
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Polsky, Zachary Samuel. "Molière's machines : comedy, narrative, and politics /." For electronic version search Digital dissertations database. Restricted to UC campuses. Access is free to UC campus dissertations, 2002. http://uclibs.org/PID/11984.
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French, Kathleen Frances. "Happiness: Early Modernity and Shakespearean Comedy." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/16703.
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This thesis investigates attitudes to happiness in the early modern period and literary representations of positive emotion. It is situated methodologically at the nexus of a number of interconnected approaches. Against a background of body studies and Freudian psychology, it engages with current research in the history of the emotions and work being done in the field of positive psychology. The insights provided by positive psychology into the power of positive emotions, such as optimism, resilience and emotional intelligence, open up a way to access the originality of Shakespeare’s understanding of the emotions and their power in people’s lives. An interdisciplinary approach provides a methodology that can incorporate analysis of imaginative and non-fiction texts with research into the historical, cultural, religious and political influences that shaped how people might have thought and felt about happiness. It considers the extent to which people could be happy in the context of religious beliefs that emphasised the fallen nature of man. As a result of increasing political absolutism and the failure of political theory to provide for societal or personal happiness, people engaged in a process of myth making. They imagined utopian societies, and they imposed their beliefs in the possibility of discovering a lost paradise on the new worlds they discovered in the Americas. More realistically, they accommodated themselves to the conditions of their lives by searching for happiness through forming meaningful personal relationships. Ethical theories about happiness formulated by Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics were influential, but came into conflict with theology, especially Augustine’s emphasis on original sin. Aquinas attempted to reconcile philosophy with theology, offering hope that a limited form of happiness might be found in this life. Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas were formative influences on the ways in which Shakespeare dramatizes the search for happiness in his comedies, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. He reflects the influence of Aristotle in his representation and evaluation of different types of happiness in the comedies. He also creates fallen political and religious worlds in which his characters must grapple with adversity. Aristotle believed that happiness was dependent on living in a benign political state. Living in fallen worlds, some of Shakespeare’s characters demonstrate an aspect of happiness that Aristotle did not address, that it is a condition that can be achieved through adversity.
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Al-Muhammad, Hasan. "Domestics in the English comedy : 1660-1737." Thesis, Bangor University, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.267347.
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Gordon, Colette. "The play of credit in Shakespearean comedy." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.515509.
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Olachea-PeÌrez, RubeÌn. "Humour, comedy and Mexican cinema : 1990-2001." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.398721.
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Kotini, Vassiliki. "The dialectics of myth in Aristophanic comedy." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.416961.
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Karakasis, Evangelos. "Terence and the language of Roman comedy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.620973.
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Farrell, Austen. "Bloody Hilarious: Animal Sacrifice in Aristophanic Comedy." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:24078360.
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This thesis seeks to understand the portrayals of animal sacrifice in the Old Comedy of classical Greece, a genre commonly considered for vulgarity, personal invective, and roots far removed from sacred acts. Recognizing that even fictional representations of sacrifice are based on real religious ritual, and that Old Comedy had a responsibility to present to the polis a reflection of its own attitudes and behaviors, comic sacrifice scenes become a valuable mode of insight on a culture that we struggle to understand through limited evidence. Approaching the plays with this in mind uncovers a richer and more complex relationship between comedy and sacrifice than might initially be expected.
Before being able to appreciate the meaning of sacrifice scenes in the plays, the first step is to establish a relationship between comedy and ritual. This study considers a progression of ideas around the identity of Greek drama, beginning with Aristotle’s Poetics and moving through the centuries as scholars identify the likely formative influences of comedy. After establishing comedy as a valid participant in the religious discourse of classical Athens, this study considers a progression of theories about the religious forces behind animal sacrifice as well as how the Greeks incorporated and expressed those forces. From Mircea Eliade’s concept of the sacred to Walter Burkert’s use of sacrifice to peer into the Greek psyche, we come to understand the interplay of ritual and performance as a culture communicates its own beliefs and attitudes.
Among the extant comedies of Aristophanes, Frogs, Peace, and Birds receive major focus for their provocative use of sacrifice and related ritual behavior. Encounters with ritual practices move the protagonists toward their end goals, and control over animal sacrifice is an indicator of each character’s power. Sacrifice in each of these cases is presented not as a reverent act but a tool to be manipulated to achieve human aims. Aristophanes is using comedy’s unique license to express a more practical understanding of the human benefits of sacrifice and to demonstrate the shifting attitudes of the polis, away from reliance on traditional models and toward a preference for human action.
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Roberts, Parker Kathryn. "Music and Festival Culture in Shakespearean Comedy." Thesis, University of Sydney, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23379.
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This thesis argues that Saturnalian festival practice is central to the representation of both vernacular and rhetorical forms of music in Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic texts. Since the early twentieth century, scholarly attention has largely focused on the representation of elaborate and rhetorical courtly styles of music in early modern theatre. As such, there has yet to be a study of music in stage drama where vernacular culture is the primary focus. This thesis examines the influence of vernacular music that arises from Saturnalian festival culture in six comedies written by Shakespeare, performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the King’s Men between the years 1594 and 1611. I have developed a cross-disciplinary methodology for examining music in early modern playtexts using a combination of literary and linguistic analysis, musicology and historically-informed performance practice. I present close readings of six Shakespearean comedies with the aim of developing a new form of musical dramaturgy, that challenges our current assumptions about literary and musical forms represented in stage drama. Each of the chapters explore the meanings and dramaturgical purposes of music in each play which have currently been overlooked due to a lack of an appropriate level of focus on vernacular music culture in the study of early modern dramatic texts. By placing the musical styles of early modern festivals at the centre of my readings of each play, I hope to challenge assumptions that have been made in the past about Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre music and move toward a more diverse consideration of musical influence in dramatic works at the turn of the seventeenth century.
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Brunning, Alizon. "Signs of change in Jacobean city comedy." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 1997. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/19035/.
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This thesis is concerned with a study of a particular genre, Jacobean city comedy, in relation to its socio-economic and religious context. It aims to show that the structural forms of city comedy share similarities with structures in Jacobean social consciousness. By arguing that the plays are productions of a material age this study suggests that these structures are manifestations of ideological changes brought about by two related systems of thought: capitalism and Protestantism.
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Tully, Meg. "Trainwreck feminism: women, comedy and postfeminist culture." Diss., University of Iowa, 2018. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6315.
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This dissertation develops the theoretical framework of “trainwreck feminism.” Forwarded by contemporary women in comedy like Mindy Kaling, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, and Amy Schumer, trainwreck feminists adopt the trope of the trainwreck—excessive in need, sex, and madness—to demonstrate the disastrous consequences of growing up in postfeminist culture that both insists women are finally liberated and continues to police their choices. Engaging ongoing debates about whether postfeminism is over since feminism is becoming a status symbol for celebrities and public figures, I argue that postfeminism remains a powerful cultural force, and women in comedy are some of its most vocal critics. Trainwreck feminism exposes the misogyny at the core of postfeminist culture, while arguing that feminist activism is still needed. Trainwreck feminism is reflective of a larger rejection of postfeminist culture, a contradictory moment that celebrates feminism’s achievements while insisting the movement is outdated. Trainwreck feminism represents a larger re-politicization of feminism in pop culture.
Each chapter examines a different comic and the specific branch of postfeminism they undermine: Mindy Kaling and the postfeminist life cycle, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer and commodity feminism, and Amy Schumer and choice feminism. Ultimately, these women imbue the trainwreck with true feminist potential, pointing a finger at postfeminist culture as a source of women’s madness. Because they are cautionary tales, trainwrecks can highlight the unspoken rules and expectations of femininity. While comedy can have a fairly nasty, depoliticizing relationship with feminism, often turning feminism into a lifestyle or label devoid of political activism, I argue that some contemporary comic texts are actively politicized, inspiring viewers to critique and change the world around them. They do so by appropriating particular vernacular rhetorics that appeal to younger, millennial audiences and using it to demonstrate how postfeminism has failed women. That is, each comic I examine leverages postfeminist sensibilities in order to critique and undermine them, engaging in a trainwreck feminism that highlights the contradictions, absurdities, and misogyny at the heart of postfeminist culture.
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Taberski, Derrick James. "A Gricean analysis of a situation comedy." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1998. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1439.
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Rainbird, Mark Charles. "Humorous inflections : "Goodness Gracious Me" : transformations in comedy /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 2002. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09arr154.pdf.
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Craig, Catriona Marie Sinclair. "Alternative comedy and the politics of live performance." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.367515.
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Papachrysostomou, Athina. "A commentary on selected fragments of middle comedy." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.434914.
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Amoroso, Angelica Anna. "W.M. Thackeray and the tradition of English comedy." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/30279.
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This thesis is about Thackeray and the comic tradition in the plays and novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It aims at showing that a study of Thackeray's fiction and its connection with the comedy of the past contributes to an understanding of the sophistication and subtlety of his comic vision. In his fiction Thackeray takes some of the comedic conventions of the tradition, though in some respects he also departs from them, expanding, developing and applying them to his time to make ironic comments on the inconsistencies and follies of English society from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. In the early and central stage of his career as a novelist he adheres to the comic tradition, yet he also introduces unconventional elements, while in the later phase occasionally he detaches himself from it temporarily, but never completely. This study examines the Thackeray's major works of fiction in chronological order, because it allows us to trace a development of his comic perspective, his narrative technique and his concerns through time. Each chapter deals with a single work of fiction, except Chapter 1 and Chapter 8. A selection of his illustrations, which offer visual comments on the story, will also be analysed; they have various purposes and integrate with the text, adding subtlety and sophistication to the author's vision. Thackeray's comic perspective is a complex combination of satire and sentimentality where the two aspects often overlap and generate ambiguity and challenge for the reader. But, ultimately, this thesis reveals that towards the end of his life the writer enriches his vision considerably by adding tragic elements in alignment with comic ones, and that he was turning to a new direction: he was embracing the tragicomic.
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Dale, A. C. S. "The representation of the demagogues in Old Comedy." Thesis, Swansea University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.636337.
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This thesis examines the representation of the 'demagogues', the leaders of Athens' radical democracy in the late-fifth and early-fourth centuries B.C., in the genre of Old Comedy. It looks at the comic sources, including the work of Aristophanes and fragments of the comedies of other poets, to see how they characterised the demagogues in their work, and to what purpose. A number of themes are studied, with the comic abuse quoted in the original Greek and in my own translations. The themes examined make up the chapters of the thesis, and are qualities with which the demagogues were charged in comedy. They are foreign parentage, trade and artisanship, cowardice, effeminacy and gluttony. It also studies animal imagery in relation to the demagogues and its significance. After setting out the aims of the thesis and covering the background to the material, including short biographies of the demagogues and the main poets whose work is quoted, and the concept of the term 'demagogue', the thesis proceeds with a study of the work of Aristotle on virtues and vices. This is relevant to the study of the comic representation of the demagogues because they are attributed with the vices defined by Aristotle as akrasia and akolasia, and as lacking the positive quality of sophrosyne. Athenian philosophical thought considered that Athenians should possess this quality if they were to be deemed worthy of citizenship. The comic poets imply, by way of the negative qualities they attribute to the demagogues, that they were not worthy in citizenship and therefore not qualified - either in social or moral terms - to lead the demos.
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Sinner, Megan. "FEMINISM IN THE FILMS OF NEW GERMAN COMEDY." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1146072869.
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Feltovich, Anne C. "Women's Social Bonds in Greek and Roman Comedy." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1311691038.
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Townshend, Sarah Elizabeth. "Marriage and desire in seventeenth-century French comedy." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6812.
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This thesis re-examines the role of marriage in the golden age of seventeenth-century French comedy. It reconsiders received wisdom on the subject to challenge acceptance of the final promise of marriage as a dénouement complet to comedy. Through an analysis of the themes of discontent, cuckoldry, fertility, non-heteronormative desire and widowhood, it offers an alternative view of what comedy can encompass. Close reading of works by Molière, Quinault, (Thomas) Corneille, (Françoise) Pascal, Ulrich and de Visé establishes that comedy can be both enjoyable and satisfying while incorporating elements that conflict with the marriage ideal. This thesis does not attempt to provide a full socio-historical reading of seventeenth-century attitudes to marriage, although an understanding of contemporary attitudes provides a starting point for close textual analysis. Critical theories, notably gender theory, are used where appropriate to further clarify the role of marriage in comedy. Chapter One presents and problematizes the framework of marriage as the structuring principle of comedy, drawing on themes of compatibility, discontent and desire. The second chapter focuses on anxiety regarding cuckoldry in comedy, relating it to the promise of marriage. An analysis of the desires of older characters in projected comedic marriages, particularly as these desires relate to fertility, is the guiding principle of Chapter Three, which also sets out essential terms of reference for the fourth chapter on widowhood and queer desire. The thesis demonstrates that rather than constituting a satisfying and happy ending, a constant challenge is posed to the promise of marriage by on-stage marriages, fears of cuckoldry, widowhood, and ‘inappropriate' or queer desires. I propose a more nuanced reading, showing that comedy can be fully satisfying and structurally complete without a final promise of marriage, and that, rather, comedy can incorporate significant elements that appear antithetical to the ideal of marriage typically associated with the genre.