By David Konstan (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) In comedy, happy endings resolve real-world conflicts. These conflicts, in turn, leave their mark on the texts in the form of gaps in plot and inconsistencies of characterization. Greek Comedy and Ideology analyzes how the structure of ancient Greek comedy betrays and responds to cultural tensions in the society of the … Continued
By Marcel Gutwirth (NHC Fellow, 1985–86) Why do we laugh? Do we really want to know why? We are torn between desire to understand the joyous human response of laughter and reluctance to expose the secret of our spontaneity to the rigors of intellectualizing, the labors of analysis. Marcel Gutwirth here offers a fresh approach … Continued
By John J. Allen (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) and José M. Ruano de la Haza Studies on the original staging of the Golden Age theater are relatively recent. Perhaps for this reason no monograph on the staging of comedy in commercial theaters existed until today in our language despite the great wealth of data that we have … Continued
Edited by J. R. Green (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) and Axel Seeberg
By Mary Hunter (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) Mozart’s comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received little critical attention. In this richly detailed book, Mary Hunter offers a sweeping, synthetic view of opera buffa in … Continued
By Alexander Welsh (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) For about three thousand years comedy has applied a welcome humanist perspective to the world’s religious beliefs and practices. From the ancient Greek comedies of Aristophanes, the famous poem by Lucretius, and dialogues of Cicero to early modern and Enlightenment essays and philosophical texts, together with the inherent skepticism … Continued
Richard Pryor may have been the most unlikely star in Hollywood history. Raised in his family’s brothels, in Peoria, Illinois, he could alchemize his stand-up by delving fully, even painfully, into the “off-color” life he'd known. Starring bigoted Archie Bunker, “All in the Family” won numerous Emmys and Golden Globe awards until it ended in … Continued