“The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel,” wrote Horace Walpole, a noted lover of all things theatrical. But comedy as an object of study is more elusive than Walpole's pithy line implies. By “comedy,” do we mean primarily dramas that end happily, perhaps with a wedding, rather than, with tragedy, a death? Is laughter essential to comedy or not? How do we extend the category of “comedy” to embrace fiction—or do we? Where does satire fit into the mix? What moral statements about the world and the cosmos can comedy offer—if any? Tragedy comes with its own complications, to be sure, but comedy is even more complicated, and as a label, it suits a broader and more varied range of cultural productions. Aristotle's Poetics gave writers a great theory of tragedy to work with or against, but his discussion of comedy there...

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