You can manage bookmarks using lists, please log in to your user account for this.
Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Friedrich Duerrenmatt and the Tragic Sense of Comedy
Contributor:
Klarmann, Adolf D.
Published:
JSTOR, 1960
Published in:
The Tulane Drama Review, 4 (1960) 4, Seite 77-104
Language:
English
DOI:
10.2307/1124880
ISSN:
0886-800X;
2326-2044
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
From its origins in the comos and mimos to the complicated gyrations of the Paris avant garde, the term comedy has come to mean different things to different people. Taking a glance at its development in modern literature, we discover that the very basis of comedy is tragic; indeed, the modern playwright no longer cares to separate his worlds into tragedy and comedy but prefers to use the term tragicomedy or, like Brecht, omit any designation altogether. However, we need not be too surprised if we remember the tragic background of The Birds or Lysistrata, The Merchant of Venice or The Tempest, The Misanthrope or Georges Dandin. The reason for calling a play a comedy or a tragedy frequently is historical or personal. Were Wozzeck to be written today it certainly would have been called something like a tragicomedy. After all, Eliot's The Cocktail Party is a comedy, Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a tragicomedy and Ionesco's The Chairs a tragic farce.