The Death of Comedy

List of contents

Preface 1. Etymologies: Getting to the Root of It 2. The Song of the Komos 3. The Lyre and the Phallus 4. Aristophanes: The One and Only? 5. Failure and Success 6. The Birds: The Uncensored Fantasy 7. Requiem for a Genre? 8. The Comic Catastrophe 9. O Menander! O Life! 10. Plautus Makes an Entrance 11. A Plautine Problem Play 12. Terence: The African Connection 13. The Mother-in-Law of Modern Comedy 14. Machiavelli: The Comedy of Evil 15. Marlowe: Schade and Freude 16. Shakespeare: Errors and Eros 17. Twelfth Night: Dark Clouds over Illyria 18. Moliere: The Class of '68 19. The Fox, the Fops, and the Factotum 20. Comedy Explodes 21. Beckett: The Death of Comedy Coda Notes Index

About the author

Erich Segal taught at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and was a Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He is the author of nine bestselling novels.

Summary

In a grand tour of comic theater over the centuries, Erich Segal traces the evolution of the classical form from its early origins in a misogynistic quip by the sixth-century B.C. Susarion, through countless weddings and happy endings, to the exasperated monosyllables of Samuel Beckett.

Product details

• Authors: Erich Segal
• Publisher: University Presses
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.10.2003
• EAN: 9780674012479
• ISBN: 978-0-674-01247-9
• Dimensions: 151 mm x 225 mm x 32 mm
• Weight: 735 g
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; History, DRAMA / Ancient & Classical, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism, PERFORMING ARTS / Comedy, Literary studies: plays and playwrights