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Comedy: Text and Theories
A course based on understanding the forms and modes of comedy
58
Literature
Undergraduate 1
03/11/2008

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Term
Play
Definition
And aesthetic method of comedy which gives pleasure and allows us to "shake up" our world and see it differently
Term
Schizophrenic
Definition
The idea that comedy can be unsettling while also resolving; it can be funny yet cruel; it can be pleasurable and painful
Term
Das ding an sich
Definition
"The thing in itself"
Term
Dogmatic Thought
Definition
Unholy thought; Came about after our shift to horizontal cosmology; When the position of idealist and realist each claim to be the whole truth.
Term
Premature Ontological Commitment
Definition
Committing to something without first thinking about it from all the different ways in which it can be thought about. -- FIXITY
Term
Realists
Definition
Materialists - believe in the world how it is; Marxists - economists; Cynics; Critics; Exact meaning of what exactly they see
Term
Idealists
Definition
Metaphysicians; "Religious Types;" Believers; The ways the human brain can make things different than what we see.
Term
Comedy
Definition
Komos-Oidia; Song of Celebration
Term
"Copernian Moment"
Definition
The time when Copernicus comes and says we are not the centers of the universe; says we are insignificant and people begin to question; we now have a shift into horizontal cosmology.
Term
Post Modern Cosmology
Definition
Now based on science, fact, empiricism; Einstein says that there may be nothing but randomness and chance.
Term
Corrective
Definition
The way in which we approach comedy. It is a corrective; a realization of incongruity between our coverings and what is covered.
Term
Incongruity
Definition
The "shaking up" of what we perceive and what is "real".
Term
Elan Vital
Definition
Vital Energy; All the abstract imponderables and potentials of life and being, coming to bear on matters of art, expression, intuition, and joy.
Term
Raideur
Definition
Rigidity; that which comedy attempts to overcome, and that which we laugh at.
Term
"Anesthesia of the Heart"
Definition
The question of compassionate regard within the comic, even for its ridiculed objects.
Term
"A flexible vice is preferable to a rigid virtue"
Definition
Term
Superiority
Definition
The idea of Baudelaire that comedy is funny when it gives us a sense of superiority over people or things.
Term
Mephitic
Definition
Baudelaire - foul-smelling; decaying and rotten. The view Baudelaire has of society
Term
Divided Psyche
Definition
Baudelaire - schizophrenic; the idea that that we are both self-celebrating and self-loathing (in terms of bodily issues)
Term
"The wise man never laughs but he trembles"
Definition
Baudelaire - Absolute knowledge and power preclude the possibility of the comic; seriousness precludes joy; when we laugh, we are not really laughing, we are trembling because laughing is bad
Term
Satanic
Definition
Baudelaire - Feels that laughing is satanic because Satan was thrown from heaven after he laughed in the face of god. - The element of superiority because it involves the lustful desire for knowledge
Term
Decadent
Definition
Baudelaire - Relates to the Fall..that is...to laugh is to fall from the mind to the body, from power to powerlessness, from ideal human to degraded animal
Term
Innocently Comic
Definition
Baudelaire - Childlike and unrefined comedy that is "clean" and "vegetable like". Requires little thought or activity
Term
Significantly Comic
Definition
Baudelaire - Cynicism, parody, aggression, superiority of man over man. Closer to Satanic superiority. Takes pleasure in being superior over others.
Term
Absolutely Comic
Definition
Man's ultimate sense of superiority over nature itself, including his own nature
Term
Catharsis
Definition
"Release of built up tension"
Term
Cathexis
Definition
The tension that is released through laughter
Term
Id
Definition
Most child-like level of the psyche in which only the most basic functions are represented. Things we cant control which cant go away
Term
Ego
Definition
Where the desire of the Id and the prohibition of the Super Ego meet.
Term
Super Ego
Definition
Where all of the forces of culture and common sense are represented. Prohibits things.
Term
Polymorphus Perversity
Definition
a psychoanalytic term for human ability to gain sexual gratification outside socially normative sexual behaviors.
Term
Joking Envelope
Definition
The technique of the deliverance of the joke. The context in which the joke is taken
Term
Besetzung
Definition
"Being beset by" "blockage"
Term
Tendentious Jokes
Definition
Most like dreams. Lift inhibition in relation to sexuality and aggression. Allows us to bring out those repressed desires just as dreams do. Explore taboos and tensions. OBSCENE
Term
Innocent Jokes
Definition
The kinds of things that are gentle and child like. Stage before jokes. Basic and sweet. Nothing at stake in these
Term
Skeptical Jokes
Definition
Opposite of innocent jokes which deal with political things. Attacks people, logic, and certainty.
Term
Consciousness vs Unconsciousness
Definition
All of the societal "norms" we experience everyday are in the conscious, and all of our illicit and taboo thoughts must be repressed in the unconsciousness (to be released in dreams).
Term
Dream Work
Definition
The work of dreams on repressed desires and wishes. A safe space where dark and nasty things can take shape.
Term
Manifest Content
Definition
Content in dreams that that we remember
Term
Latent Content
Definition
the things we feel underneath the dreams - allows us to interpret more
Term
Condensation
Definition
A kind of incongruity. Bringing together unusual things to form one image - Puns
Term
Displacement
Definition
Means by which repressed things find a way to bypass conscious thought. Ex. if you dream of overeating, something has changed in your conscious life.
Term
Regression
Definition
Talks about moving away from filters of language, laws, etc to express exact meanings and feelings. Clearly defining the basic meaning of something without worrying about laws and norms.
Term
Sacrifice and Feast
Definition
the core of comic ritual; Agon is sacrifice, feast is komos. It is agon giving way to komos that makes something comic.
Term
Alazons
Definition
The disillusioned, fooled, and prematurely onotologically committed. Conflicts with the eirons to eventually resolve in a moment of anagnorisis
Term
Eirons
Definition
The knowers who see past the veils of society
Term
Anagnorisis
Definition
the realization or revelation of the struggle between agon and komos, between Alazons and Eirons.
Term
Carnival
Definition
The level of the body: Raising of the flesh.
Term
"Deposuit potentes de sede, et exultavit humiles"
Definition
Bring down the powerful, raise up the lowly
Term
Degradation of the Sublime
Definition
The bringing down of the powerful in Sypher's terms
Term
Ennoblement of the degraded
Definition
the bringing up of the lowly in Sypher's terms
Term
Ithyphallus
Definition
Greek religious right where all of the power is bestowed in the penis - stands for power
Term
Ass Festival
Definition
All of the Greek priests kiss a donkey as a sign of criticism upon themselves
Term
Magister Ludi
Definition
The character of McMurphy. He brings about the carnivalesque features to places and things.
Term
Apollonian/Dionysian
Definition
Apollonian: Noble Reason, Rationality and Certainty, Nurse Ratched
Dionysian: Passion, Celebrates the orgiastic things in life, McMurphy

The struggle between these two is the agon.
Term
Pistis
Definition
The way things seem
Term
Gnosis
Definition
Knowledge of the way things are
Term
Vitalist
Definition
Proponent of of the dynamic forces and potentials of life, unencrusted and unencumbered by the ordering forces upon it.
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