1. Birth of a Comic Form

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. Introduction 1
5. Part I. The Fool at Play
6. 1. Birth of a Comic Form 17
7. 2. Strolling Players and the Advent of the Fool 38
8. 3. Practice of Stage Interaction 60
9. 4. The Fool’s Space and Time 79
10. Part II. Fabricating Comedy and the Fate of the Fool in the Age of Reform
11. 5. Making Comedy Whole 93
12. 6. Biases in Precedent 113
13. 7. Sanitation and Unity 128
14. 8. Comedic Plot, Comic Time, Dramatic Time 147
15. Part III. Life, Theater, and the Restoration of the Fool
16. 9. Policey and the Legitimacy of Delight 167
17. 10. The Place of Laughter in Life 185
18. 11. National Literature I: Improvement 202
19. 12. National Literature II: Custom 220
20. Part IV. The Vitality of Folly in Goethe’s Faust and Kleist’s Jug
21. 13. Faust I: Setting the Stage 239
22. 14. Faust II: Mirroring and Framing in the Form of Faust 257
23. 15. Faust III: The Diabolical Comic 277
24. 16. Antinomies of the Classical: On Kleist’s Broken Jug 300
25. Postlude 319
26. Bibliography 325
27. Index 343