History
In ancient Greece, comedy seems to have originated in songs or recitations aporpos of fertility festivals or gatherings, or also in making fun at other people or stereotypes. Aristotle, in the Poltics, states that comedy originated in Phallic songs and the light treatment of the otherwise base and ugly. He also adds that the origins of comedy are obscure because it was not treated seriously from its inception.
Northrop Frye described the comic genre as a drama that pits two societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. He depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old", The Anatomy of Criticism. 1957, but this dichotomy is seldom described as an entirely satisfactory explanation. A later view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes; in this sense, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse to ruses which engender very dramatic.
Read more about this topic: Comedy (drama)
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