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UNI-VERSE. A brief discussion of genre: Comedy Tragedy Romance. FUZZY CATEGORIES.
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UNI-VERSE A brief discussion of genre: Comedy Tragedy Romance
FUZZY CATEGORIES The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. (Hamlet, 2.2.391-4)
TRAGEDY: Division and Displacement • Conflict between • Honour and Duty • Surface and Substance • Social world and individual desire • Nature and nature • Providence and will
COMEDY: DELIGHT “…for delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever comes of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Delight hath a joy in it, either permanent or present.” (Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry)
ROMANCE • Er… no.
ROMANCE: Heightened Reality • Magical forces • Moral allegory • Court intrigue • Mistaken identity Interimplication of the mundane and the mystical • Mutual influence • Resolution of mundane problems by supernatural means
Tragedy, Comedy, Romance and “Reading” • HERMENEUTICS: a mode of inquiry based on a metaphor of DIS-COVERY or exposure of an interior truth. • Assumes that • A truth exists • a stable reality • mis-reading can be corrected by proper application of skill OR inspiration
TRAGEDY Faulty or indeterminate hermeneutics Opacity or confusion of signs POLYSEMY COMEDY Functional hermeneutics Transparency of signs Unified meaning Tragedy, Comedy: Hermeneutics
Romance/Tragi-comedy • Corrective hermeneutics • Magic/supernatural perspective “corrects” human error • Allegorical model harmonizes nature and Nature