Entertainment / Literature / Comedy: (from Greekkomos, 'songs of merrimakers'): In the original meaning of the word, comedy referred to a genre of drama during the Dionysia festivals of ancient Athens. The first comedies were loud and boisterous drunken affairs, as the word's etymology suggests. Later, in medieval and Renaissance use, the word comedy came to mean any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending. The comedy did not necessarily have to be funny, and indeed, many comedies are serious in tone. It is only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that comedy's exclusive connotations of humor arose. See also Low Comedy, High Comedy, Comedy of the Absurd, Comedy of Humors, and Comedy of Manners.
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Entertainment / Literature / Romantic Comedy: Sympathetic comedy that presents the adventures of young lovers trying to overcome social, psychological, or interpersonal constraints to achieve a successful union. Commedia dell'arte is a general ty MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Tragicomedy: A experimental literary work--either a play or prose piece of fiction--containing elements common to both comedies and tragedies. The genre is marked by characters of both high and low degree, even th MORE
Entertainment / Literature / High Comedy: Elegant comedies characterized by witty banter and sophisticated dialogue rather than the slapstick physicality and blundering common to low comedy. MORE