1. Chapter 4

2.  Genre
 A French word meaning “category” or “type”
 Oldest and best-know genres are:
▪ Tragedy
▪ Comedy
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3.  Traditional Tragedy
 Tragic Heroes and Heroines
▪ A person of stature—king, queen, general
▪ Stand as symbols of an entire culture or society
▪ Trapped in a fateful web of tragic circumstances
 Tragic Fate
 Acceptance of Responsibility
 Tragic Verse
 The Effects of Tragedy
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4.  Modern Tragedy
 No queens or kings as central figures
 Written in prose rather than poetry
 Probe the same depths and ask the same
questions
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5.  Characteristics of Comedy
 Suspension of Natural Laws
 Contrast Between Individuals and the Social
Order
 The Comic Premise
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6.  Forms of Comedy
 Farce
▪ Thrives on exaggeration
▪ Has no intellectual pretensions
▪ Aims are entertainment and laughter
▪ Has excessive plot complications
▪ Humor results from ridiculous situations as well as
pratfalls and horseplay
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7.  Forms of Comedy continued
 Burlesque
▪ Relies on knockabout physical humor, gross
exaggeration, and occasional vulgarity
▪ Historically, it was a ludicrous imitation of other
forms of drama
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9.  Forms of Comedy continued
 Satire
▪ Uses wit, especially sophisticated language; irony;
and exaggeration to expose or attack evil and
foolishness
 Domestic Comedy
▪ Usually deals with family situations
▪ Found in TV situation comedies
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10.  Forms of Comedy continued
 Comedy of Manners
▪ Concerned with pointing up the foibles and
peculiarities of the upper class
▪ Uses verbal wit
 Comedy of Ideas
▪ Uses comic techniques to debate intellectual
propositions such as the nature of war, cowardice,
and romance
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11.  Heroic Drama
 Serious drama that has heroic or noble
characters and certain other traits of classic
tragedy
 Has a happy ending
 Assumes a basically optimistic worldview
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12.  Melodrama
 Means “song drama” or “music drama”
 Originally comes from the Greek
 Made popular by the French
 “Music” refers to the background music that
accompanied these plays
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13.  Melodrama continued
 Relies on surface effects that create
suspense, fear, nostalgia, etc.
 Heroes and heroines are clearly delineated
from villains
 Has easily recognizable stock characters
 Virtue is always victorious
 Has a suspenseful plot
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14.  Domestic Drama
 Deals with people from everyday life instead
of kings, queens, and nobility
 Common themes are:
▪ Problems of society
▪ Struggles within a family
▪ Dashed hopes
▪ Renewed determination
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15.  Tragicomedy
▪ Point of view is mixed
▪ Prevailing attitude is a synthesis, or fusion, of the
serious and the comic
 Shakespearean Tragicomedy
 Modern Tragicomedy
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