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UNI-VERSE

A brief discussion of genre:ComedyTragedy

Romance

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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)

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TRAGEDY: Division and Displacement

• Conflict between– Honour and Duty– Surface and

Substance– Social world and

individual desire– Nature and nature– Providence and will

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TIME IS OUT OF JOINT

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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)

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COMEDY: Decorum: Celestial Spheres

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COMEDY: RECONCILIATION

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ROMANCE

• Er… no.

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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

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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

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Tragedy, Comedy: Hermeneutics

TRAGEDY• Faulty or

indeterminate hermeneutics

• Opacity or confusion of signs

• POLYSEMY

COMEDY• Functional

hermeneutics

• Transparency of signs

• Unified meaning

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Romance/Tragi-comedy

• Corrective hermeneutics– Magic/supernatural perspective “corrects” human

error– Allegorical model harmonizes nature and Nature