Class Notes February 1, 2011

• The Argument of Comedy
• Northrop Frye
• Answers "What is comedy?"
• http://books.google.com/books?id=_W4htMy5zlcC&pg=PA93&dq=the+argument+of+comedy&hl=en&ei=wedITay0IJSisQO7gc2UCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=the%20argument%20of%20comedy&f=false
• Old Comedy
• Aristophanes
• Shakespeare
• deals with death
• New Comedy
• deals with female/male relations
• The Green World
• uses symbol of woods
• revives energies
• Shakespeare often uses in his works
• The Winter's Tale
• Passage of the day
• Antigonus exits
• stage directions "exit pursued by bear"
• Ted Hughes often discusses the bear, boar, horse, and lion
• all are agents of metamorphosis
• Midsummer's Night Dream
• Consuming myth
• Brother Battle
• Cain & Able Archetype
• rational brother vs. irrational brother
• seen in As You Like It, the end of the Tempest, & King Leer
• Occasion for merriment
• Theseus bring to light that he is going to ignore the factors that brought about his marriage
• his wife is a war prize
• Displace myth
• The Wood Imp
• Russian literature
• Syntax
• gives in at the end of a new comedy
• Egeus
• Spirit of comedy is spirit of youth
• Comus
• means comedy
• "coming together"
• symbolic
• euphemism for
• marriage
• sex
• feast
• Ashley's blog
• discusses how the lowest people in can same brilliant things
• "every now & then the least of us is capable of great things"
• Levels/Realms of mythology
• Gods
• Heroes
• People
• Chaos
• language declines much in the same way
• Thesus
• rapist
• vot'ress
• Nate's blog
• discusses Northrop Frye
• Bottom
• IV.I.199
• mimicking St. Paul letter to the Corinthians
• Shakespeare used a Geneva translation