Patriarchy and New Comedy in Ancient Athens and Rome: Revisiting Northrop Frye's “Mythos of Spring: Comedy”
-
James E. Caron
James E. Caron is a Professor of English at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. In addition to publishing articles on comic art and comic laughter, he has co-edited a book of essays on George Washington Harris and another about Charlie Chaplin, and publishedMark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter (2008).
Abstract
Few theoretical statements about comic drama and fiction can match the influence of Northrop Frye's essay, “Mythos of Spring: Comedy.” Particularly for scholars interested not only in classic comic literary forms such as stage comedy, but also in the popular forms of contemporary films as well as television sitcoms, Frye's theory continues to be useful for understanding basic structures within large quantities of examples. In this essay, I challenge Frye's model for comic art. Although a quasi-Oedipal plot dominates extant New Comedy, the model suppresses the fact that it is only one significant plot among others capable of generating variations. More importantly, when one examines plays structured by the quasi-Oedipal plot, Frye's summary – a generational struggle that ends in the son's triumph – misrepresents the material: the son's triumph is not a foregone conclusion. New Comedy's function as the symbolic womb of the Western comic tradition is thus far from unproblematic. My challenge has serious consequences, not just for those critics who have organized their analyses on it, but also for those critics who might theorize about literary and popular art forms, as well as for scholars who would write a history of comic forms in the West.
About the author
James E. Caron is a Professor of English at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. In addition to publishing articles on comic art and comic laughter, he has co-edited a book of essays on George Washington Harris and another about Charlie Chaplin, and published Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter (2008).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Kynical dogs and cynical masters: Contemporary satire, politics and truth-telling
- Hoisan-wa in jest: Humor, laughter, and the construction of counter-hegemonic affect in contemporary Chinese American language maintenance
- Relationship-focused humor styles and relationship satisfaction in dating couples: A repeated-measures design
- Humor in leader-follower relationships: Humor styles, similarity and relationship quality
- Experimentally observed responses to humor are related to individual differences in emotion perception and regulation in everyday life
- An explorative study into the possible benefits of using humor in creative tasks with a class of primary five pupils
- Assessing humor at work: The humor climate questionnaire
- The analysis of elementary and high school students' natural and humorous responses patterns in coping with embarrassing situations
- Patriarchy and New Comedy in Ancient Athens and Rome: Revisiting Northrop Frye's “Mythos of Spring: Comedy”
- Book reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Kynical dogs and cynical masters: Contemporary satire, politics and truth-telling
- Hoisan-wa in jest: Humor, laughter, and the construction of counter-hegemonic affect in contemporary Chinese American language maintenance
- Relationship-focused humor styles and relationship satisfaction in dating couples: A repeated-measures design
- Humor in leader-follower relationships: Humor styles, similarity and relationship quality
- Experimentally observed responses to humor are related to individual differences in emotion perception and regulation in everyday life
- An explorative study into the possible benefits of using humor in creative tasks with a class of primary five pupils
- Assessing humor at work: The humor climate questionnaire
- The analysis of elementary and high school students' natural and humorous responses patterns in coping with embarrassing situations
- Patriarchy and New Comedy in Ancient Athens and Rome: Revisiting Northrop Frye's “Mythos of Spring: Comedy”
- Book reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
