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The aim of the article is to compare two old-Polish dramas of the so-called “popular scene”, and thus point to the directions of evolution of carnival representations in the former Polish Nobles’ Republic. The first work comes from the mid-sixteenth century and is characterised by a simple story. The second , written in the first half of the seventeenth century, has a vast plot and much more extensive stage directions. By contrasting both the story and the type of heroes and the way of constructing a verbal joke by anonymous authors, the author comes to the conclusion that although both performances meet the convention of old-Polish “tragicomedy”, one can see not only similarities, but also significant differences. In Tragedia żebracza of 1552, the story is based on one plot only (the conflict between beggars and a merchant), while in the text written in the seventeenth century there are many more plots. In both texts, cheerful scenes are intertwined with sad ones (according to the then convention of “tragicomedy”), and the finales of the stories in both works are happy. The comedy is achieved, both in the sixteenth- and seventeenth- century drama, mainly through contrast and surprise (e.g. contrasting characters with a different mentality, ways of thinking and speaking; the contrast between stereotypical images and authentic images of people, inadequacy of declarations in relation to real people, behaviour of some stage characters incompatible with the viewer’s expectations, an example of which is a lively dance of an allegedly sick and lame beggar, etc.) In both texts we observe a type of humour that fits into the old-Polish concept of so-called “satirical comedy”. This means that some characters are consciously and deliberately degraded by ridiculing and highlighting their negative traits. Thus, comic elements do not serve only a ludic function and are not merely “attached” to the story itself to achieve humorous effects, as Julian Lewański, a researcher of old-Polish drama, wrote many years ago. This is because comedy also serves for didactic purposes. More recognizable as a “carnival” drama is the seventeenth-century work. It contains, unlike the sixteenth-century work, a lot of allusions to the carnival time and post-New Year’s party (organised after t New Year’s Day). In the extended stage directions of the Baroque text, the author signalled much more stage means to build comic situations than in the sixteenth-century drama, for example, the author’s information on the facial expressions or, close to pantomime, the actors’ clownish movements are significant. This is related to the appearance, the action and the characteristics of the mask-characters. The masquerade is still very poorly outlined in Renaissance tragicomedy (removing rags and putting on beautiful robes by the beggars can be treated as the masquerade). The Baroque text is dominated by stage characters wearing masks. In the seventeenth-century work we can also observe a desire to diversify the action, increasing the number of comedy heroes and verbal jokes. In these jokes there is a play on words, funny associations, paronymity and ambivalence of meanings. In the Baroque drama the number of means and ways of expressing comedy has also increased, e.g. we observe language parodies absent from the sixteenth-century text, unusual concepts and arguments of stage characters based on absurdity. Moreover, the anonymous seventeenth-century author used literary irony in his text (in the “sophist’s” utterance) as a separate means of provoking comedy. The contrast of those two “carnival” shows originating from two old-Polish literary periods — the Renaissance and the Baroque, is a testimony to the development and transformation of the “tragicomedy” genre.

Želimir Žilnik’s time in West Germany (1973-6) ended with the short feature Paradise: An Imperialist Tragicomedy (Paradies: Eine imperialistische Tragikomodie, Alligator Film, 1976). An extraordina...

This article approaches Shakespeare’s (and Wilkins’s?) tragicomedy _Pericles_ (pub. 1609) not merely in the familiar light of the miracle play tradition but also as drawing, for its representation of Marina, on the hagiographic model of the virgin martyr. Despite the confessional obstacle, the heroine’s tribulations in the brothel provides distinctive common ground with the _Tragedie de sainte Agnes_ by Pierre Troterel (1615) in accompanying the menace posed to virginity with salacious humour and quasi-farcical action. On this point, Troterel departs from French theatrical precedent in ways suggesting specific indebtedness to the English play. A supplementary intertext here is the only other known contemporary dramatisation of the Apollonius story besides _Pericles_, _Les heureuses infortunes_, by Joachim Bernier de la Brousse, (1618). I have elsewhere proposed that Bernier’s work, too, shows familiarity with that play. Yet he invests his heroine with a saintliness beyond what either Pericles or the Apollonius narratives warrant – to the point of echoing, too, the precedent of Troterel. Bernier’s brothel scenes, combining traces of farce with motifs of miracle and conversion, tend to confirm this double heritage. Arguably, this trio of dramatic texts affords a glimpse of the earliest impact of a Shakespearean text on French theatrical practices.

This article is devoted to the comparative description of two string concerts by Sergei Mikhailovich Slonimsky (1932–2020): the violin "Concerto Primaverile" (1983), focused on the Romantic style of the XIXth century, and the viola "Tragicomedy" (2005), related to the avant-garde line of the composer's work. Each of the opuses embodies different types of programmaticity: a generalized one in "Concerto Primaverile" for violin and string orchestra, and more concretized one in the concert on "Crime and Punishment" by F. Dostoevsky for viola and chamber orchestra. Thus, Slonimsky also turned to both types of programmaticity in solo compositions for these instruments, for example, figurative specificity becomes the main characteristic in the dramaturgy of the final piece for violin "Legend" (based on the novel by I. Turgenev). On the contrary, the Viola Sonata and Variations for a solo instrument rather address a generalized compositional approach. Comparison of the two concert scores follows the lines of their stylistic difference: programmaticity, specificity of dramaturgy and technical implementation, and in particular problems such as complex melodic figuration, contrapuntal saturation of homophonic monodic texture, the role of micropolyphony, the introduction of third and quarter tones and other non-standard principles of sound production.

L’originalita di stile e contenuti della produzione di Nathaniel Lee e spesso interpretata principalmente alla luce della presunta malattia mentale dell’autore. Il presente contributo propone un nuovo approccio all’opera di Lee; dimostra come la tragedia Brutus (1680), che contiene una sorta di nosologia delle alterazioni del pensiero o del comportamento umano, sia un testo liminare, sulla soglia tra opera letteraria e trattato medico. L’autore si appropria del discorso scientifico a lui contemporaneo non solo per contestare le piu recenti concezioni di patologia mentale, ma anche come strumento per articolare una riflessione sulla condizione del potere politico. DOI : 10.17456/SIMPLE-156 Parole chiave Nathaniel Lee, follia, internamento, Commedia della Restaurazione, storia della medicina. Bibliografia Andrews, Jonathan et al . 1997. The History of Bethlem . London-New York: Routledge. Andrews, Jonathan. 1998. 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Hayne, Victoria. 1996. “All Language Then is Vile”: The Theatrical Critique of Political Rhetoric in Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus . ELH , 63, 2: 337-365. Hermanson, Anne. 2014. The Horror Plays of the English Restoration . Farnham: Ashgate. Hobbes, Thomas. 2011 [1651]. Leviathan . A. P. Martinich & Brian Battiste eds. New York: Broadview. Hughes, Derek. 2008 [2001]. Heroic Drama and Tragicomedy. Susan J. Owen ed. A Companion to Restoration Drama . Oxford: Blackwell, 195-210. Ingram, Allan & Michelle Faubert. 2003. Cultural Constructions of Madness . New York: Palgrave. Lee, Nathaniel. 1967 [1680]. Lucius Junius Brutus . John Loftis ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Livio, Tito. 1841. Titi Livii Patavini historiarum ab Urbe condita libri / La storia romana di Tito Livio . Luigi Mabil (a cura di) (Vol. 1). Venezia: Giuseppe Antonelli. Locke, John. 1975 [1690]. Essay Concerning Human Understanding . P. H. Nidditch ed. Oxford: Claredon. Locke, John. 2004 [1690]. The Second Treatise of Government . Jospeh Carrig ed. New York: Barnes & Noble. Loftis, John. ed. 1967. Introduction. Nathaniel Lee, Lucius Junius Brutus . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, xi-xxiv. MacDonald, Michael. 1981. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth Century England . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1962 [1532]. Il Principe e altri scritti . Vittorio De Caprariis (a cura di). Bari: Laterza. Machiavelli, Niccolo. 2000 [1531]. Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio . Corrado Vivanti (a cura di). Torino: Einaudi. Natali, Ilaria. 2016. “Remov’d from human eyes”: Madness and Poetry 1676-1774 . Firenze: Firenze University Press. Nicoll, Allardyce. 1952 [1923]. A History of Restoration Drama 1600-1700 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter, Roy. 2000. Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World . London: The Penguin Press. Porter, Roy. 2002. Madness: A Brief History . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scull, Andrew T. 2015. Madness and Civilization. A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine . Princeton: Princeton University Press. Verdurmen, Peter. 1989. Lucius Junius Brutus and Restoration Tragedy: The Politics of Trauma. Journal of European Studies , 19, 2: 81-98. Vieth, David M. 1975. Psychological Myth as Tragedy: Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus . Huntington Library Quarterly , 39, 1: 57-76. Ward, William Adolphus. 1875. A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne (Vol. 2). London: Macmillan & Co. Willis, Thomas. 1683. Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes . London: Thomas Dring. Willis, Thomas. 1685 [1681]. The London Practice of Physick . London: Thomas Basset et al . Wilmot John, Earl of Rochester. 1800 [1675]. An Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of Horace. Samuel Johnson ed. The Works of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (Vol. II). London: Andrew Miller, 16-17. Wilson, John Harold. 1968. A Preface to Restoration Drama . Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

Although the ancient Athenian satyr-play was the model for Italian Renaissance pastoral tragicomedy, its chorus of singing and dancing satyrs was suppressed, and these same essential characters wer...

The intention of this paper is the semantic disfiguration of the cultural subtext of black-humorous elements in Dušan Kovačevićʼs comediography, and a method of research is to synthetically discover the meaning on a symbolic plane of the text. The comic elements of Kovačević‘s plays are presented based on the plays: The Marathon Family, Radovan III, Balkan Spy, Claustrophobic Comedy, The Professional, Roaring Tragedy, also, based on film adaptations of plays Balkan Spy and The Professional. The subject of this paper is to determine the genre charcteristics of Dušan Kovačevićʼs comedies, as well as a comparative analysis of parodic in the context of Serbian literature history. An analysis of comic elements is performed based on the theory of drama, comedy and absurdity. This paper discusses the concept of parody and grotesque. The second part of the paper refers to extratextual characterictics that are scenic type of nature and contribute to the atmosphere of black-humorous social regression. The goal of this paper is to relate the characterisation of Dušan Kovačevićʼs dramatic prosèdē as tragicomic. His comedies demonstrate internal aspects and characteristics of tragedy, but the actions of the characters from plays are comic in nature.

Maren Ade is often included among the members of the Berlin School, yet her works are marked by a comedic tone, and frequently a tragicomic one. This tendency is already evident in her first two features, The Forest for the Trees (2003) and Everyone Else (2009), and it becomes even more so in her third, Toni Erdmann (2016), which generated a furor among audiences and critics. Taking Sigmund Freud’s reflections on ambivalence and overdetermination as its starting point, this article examines Ade’s film as a synthetic tragicomedy in which comedy and tragedy do not alternate and follow each other as distinct tendencies—as in the “additive” tragicomedy—but together produce contradiction and uncertainty.

This study discusses the most famous works of Gogol and uncovers the problem of representing the comic as an artistic category in these works. The comic techniques with which the author achieves the laughter effect are considered, the notion of comic and tragicomic is considered, and how the author in his works of different years uses various techniques that create this artistic effect. The study also reveals the problem of the evolution of Gogol's creativity and the general trends in the attitude of the writer to the category of the comic. The study consists of three parts: the first one reveals the problem of the comic, as an esthetic category, the second presents an analysis of the main texts of Gogol and reveals the techniques by which the comic technique appears in the text, the third part contains conclusions based on the results of the analysis of works

In the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, generally speaking, tragedy and comedy were two genres which were held apart. The Roman playwright Plautus used the expression “tragicomedy”, it is tru...

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi presents us with a mix of domestic tragedy and revenge tragicomedy. In an intriguing historical parallel, Laroque reminds us that Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary was arrested in her castle in 1610 for the blood baths she took after a mass killing of servants and young girls. In the play, Laroque contends, many water images seemingly suggest the idea of purgation. Cariola’s idea of ‘a progress to the baths/At Lucca’ in 3.2 temporarily creates the fantasy of female companionship and evokes the tradition of women’s bath as described by Nicolas de Nicolay’s Peregrinations and voyages…into Turquie. Yet, the tragedy finally exposes the insidious work of polluted waters that reverse the beneficent action of curative baths.

El propósito de este artículo es realizar un estudio comparado entre las dos medianeras: Umm Rašīd, heroína de la primera pieza de sombras, Ṭayf al-Jayāl, de Ibn Dāniyāl y la vieja Celestina de la Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea de Fernando de Rojas. Dos maestras del arte de la seducción, ideadas en el seno de la tradición literaria, pintura de un mundo vivo y reflejo del inmediato conocimiento que los autores tenían de su entorno social. Ante todo, el estudio aplica la crítica del modelo celestinesco para concretar la caracterización de la tercera. El cotejo sistemático de los textos revela coincidencias más que llamativas entre ambas protagonistas., The purpose of this article is to make a comparative study between the Arabic and Spanish characterization of the go-between: Umm Rašīd, heroine of Ibn Dāniyāl’s first shadow play, Ṭayf al-Khayāl and Rojas’ Celestina, principal protagonist of the Tragicomedy of Calisto y Melibea. Two masters of the art of seduction, designed within the heart of literatura tradition, painting of a living world and a reflection of the immediate knowledge that the authors had of their social scene. First of all, the study applies the criticism of the Celestinesque model to concrete the characterization of the go-between. The systematic comparison of the texts reveals more clear resemblances between both protagonists.

Dans Artful, Ali Smith mêle essai et fiction de manière novatrice, offrant à son lecteur une variation métatextuelle sur la ‘mort de l’auteur’ théorisée par Roland Barthes. L’implosion des structures narratives reflète le bouleversement du deuil, état d’exception qui suspend le cours de la vie ordinaire. Le ton de ce récit de deuil, qui comporte un personnage défunt fantomatique et un narrateur/une narratrice en deuil, est souvent cocasse, incongru, comme pour mettre l’ex-centricité à l’honneur. L’exception s’apparente notamment ici à un renversement postmoderniste des normes et conventions génériques de récits de deuil comme d’ouvrages universitaires. Ali Smith’s Artful innovatively mingles essay and fiction in a playful metatextual variation on Barthes’s ‘death of the author’. As a disruption of ordinary life, grief heralds a state of exception, aptly portrayed by the implosion of narrative structures. Smith’s aesthetics revolve around dissensions from the norm: the storyline features a ghostly dead character and sets an unusual, often comical tone in its bereavement story. Artful’s genre, tone and protagonists could be defined as exceptional, turning ex-centricity into a principle. The exception works as a postmodernist reversal of the norm, twisting the conventions of academic lectures and canonical grief tales.

Francisco Jose Freire (1719-1773), known as Cândido Lusitano, in the treatise Arte poetica, ou Regras da Verdadeira Poesia em geral, e de todas as suas especies principaes, tratadas com juizo critico (ed. 1748; 2 nd ed. 1759), condemns tragicomedy as a hybrid and vicious genre, neither tragic nor comic, without proportion or unity, and Il Pastor Fido , a pastoral tragicomedy composed by Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538-1612), whose first edition was published in 1590, is rejected as a bad work of art. The blame of tragicomedy and of the famous Italian poem is based on the metaphor of the monstrum , presented in the initial steps ( vv. 14-31) of the Epistula ad Pisones , the Horace’s Poetics (1st century B.C.). This epistle gives Francisco Jose Freire the criteria for judging poetry in the Portuguese eighteenth-century. --- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n47a1160

Este trabajo ofrece una aproximacion a los desarrollos de la tragicomedia en el teatro espanol del siglo xvi, asi como sus relaciones con la tradicion europea.

Teknophagy (τεκνοϕαγία), or child-eating, is an apt subject for tragedy. It introduces the theme of miasma, it escalates violence and epitomises the destructive family feuds that Aristotle prized as the most suitable stories for tragedy. Therefore, unsurprisingly, the teknophagies of Thyestes and Tereus were dramatised in three fifth-century tragedies, all of them preserved only in fragments: Euripides’Thyestes, Sophokles’Thyestes(Β) and Sophokles’Tereus. What is surprising is the appearance of plays by the same titles in the comic tradition, includingTereusplays by Kantharos (C5 BC), Anaxandrides (C4 BC) and Philetairos (C4 BC) along with Diokles’Thyestes(Β) (late C5 BC to early C4 BC). Therefore, this study will first consider how Tereus’ teknophagy was adapted to mythical burlesques, to then consider how comic adaptations of Thyestes’ teknophagy influenced Seneca'sThyestes.

Este artigo tece reflexões acerca da presença da figura do bobo, cuja cenas cômicas são recorrentes em textos trágicos, tanto de Shakespeare como de seus predecessores e contemporâneos, a pontos destes textos serem, por sugestão pelo autor, denominados tragicomédia ou comitragédia. O estudioso propõe grupos de tipos de passagens cômicas dentro das peças renascentistas, ressaltando que Shakespeare é o grande expoente do uso da comicidade em suas peças trágicas, porém, em perspectiva cronológica, Alden expõe como o riso, visto como a consequência da comicidade em detrimento das ações dos bobos, perpassou por autores predecessores e contemporâneos a Shakespeare.

M. L. Andreev. Farce, tragedy, tragicomedy. Essays on historical poetics of dramatic genres.

This article represents the fi rst ever attempt to examine the series of pamphlets on Pierce Penniless, the poor London intellectual, written by T. Nashe, T. Middleton, Anonymous and T. Dekker in 1592–1606, as a unifi ed collection. The three sequels, written more than a decade later than Nashe’s original pamphlet, off er various solutions to Pierce’s problem except the change in attitude to scholars he had been yearning for. The protagonist’s supplication to the devil brings it close to Marlowe’s Tragical history of Doctor Faustus, composed only a little earlier, and highlights the uncommon elements in both narratives. Both Faustus and Pierce begin with melancholic introspection, although their later choices are diff erent in that Faustus renounces the learning he had been involved in, whereas Pierce’s appeal to the devil is a gesture intended to restore the order that he thinks had been undermined by the ‘cormorants’. Both Marlowe’s dramatic and Nashe’s prosaic narratives can be seen in the light of contemporary debate on “mongrel tragicomedy” (as defi ned by Philip Sidney). Rather than “mingling kings and clowns”, playwrights and pamphletists examine the tragic aspects of satire and comic aspects of intellectual plea by focusing on an intellectual protagonist. The pamphlet, traditionally seen as a moralistic genre only, appears as a complex text with an important focus on theatricality and the theatre as a metaphor of life and the stage of justice. The appearance of the devil on stage as a “Prologue in its own play” in Middleton’s Black Booke, the journey of the Knight of the post to hell in Dekker’s pamphlets and the point-by-point response to Pierce set against the panicridden city in the anonymous sequel are shown to be informed by theatre and imbued with theatricality.

Thomas Middleton’s 1622 tragicomedy The Nice Valour: Or, the Passionate Madman takes shame as its central preoccupation. The limited scholarship on this play has focused primarily on its re...

Miguel de Cervantes’s narrative “El curioso impertinente” [“The Curious Impertinent”] inserted into the frst part of Don Quixote, fascinated the English playwrights of the seventeenth century. This tragic story about curiosity, fdelity, voyeurism and male homosociality was adapted in plots or subplots of several plays written in the Jacobean and Restoration periods, though often, however, averting the tragic ending and adding comedic elements. As regards Restoration adaptations, two good examples are Aphra Behn’s The Amorous Prince; or The Curious Husband (1671) and John Crowne’s The Married Beau; or, The Curious Impertinent (1694). Behn’s play is a tragicomedy built around a romantic intrigue that attempts to exploit both the serious and comic potentials of the story, and provides a happy ending of reconciliation and multiple marriages thanks to the resolute intervention of the female characters. Crowne’s work, however, largely downplays the seriousness of the plot and turns the action around more conceited and superfcial characters, who provide several laughter-raising situations. In The Married Beau the comedic happy ending is favoured not through witty intrigue but through repentance. This article intends to analyse this genre shift and, more particularly, how Crowne adapts Cervantes’s story to the English comic stage of the 1690s. Keywords: Miguel de Cervantes; “El curioso impertinente” [“The Curious Impertinent”]; adaptation; genre; Aphra Behn; John Crowne

William Sampson’s 1636 play The Vow Breaker presents us with what looks like generic confusion: a cat (of all the creatures the least likely to stick to the script) seems to offer us comic relief in a play which, though intended as tragedy, descends into melodramatic sub-Kydian fustian. This essay discusses how the genre of early modern drama is affected by the employment of cats as actors, focusing on Sampson’s play which seeks to consolidate tragic effect by emphasising the parallels between a persecuted or helpless animal and the tragic protagonist, in the person of Ann. The cat in the original production was almost certainly real (though we can’t prove this), and the essay will argue that tone and genre are crucially influenced by this casting decision. The play is rescued from its fustian, made more troubling, by the uncomfortable stage effects resulting from its feline performer. The essay interacts with Nicholas Ridout’s reading of the ‘affect’ of real animals on the stage, arguing, though, that the early modern stage cat resists a clash between semiotics and phenomenology by not conforming to Ridout’s competing binaries. Ridout argues – following Vidal-Naquet – that ‘sacrifice is intrinsic to tragic form’. In The Vow Breaker neither sacrificial victim accepts her fate willingly, and it is this return to the pre-tragic, ‘known of old’ as Freud might have it – holy, wild, live, phenomenal, magic – which Sampson struggles to contain. The final act of the play seeks to restore the ritual of tragedy, disturbed by the various uncontrollable variables in the main plot, by means of ritual animal disguise and by the effacing of the pre-tragic and the feminine.

Along with the genre forms that have not stopped their development for many centuries, but have gained significant transformations (tragedy, comedy, drama, melodrama, tragicomedy), there are also numerous genres, whichfell out of the history of drama for a long time (often for centuries) and were not claimed by theatrical art. However, in the drama of the 20th – beginning of the 21st century the clear tendency for the revival and modification of archaic genres, first of all, seemingly, “dead” genres of the medieval theater is characteristic. In its genre system religious drama genres (especially mystery and miracle plays), didactic (pritch, parable) and comic (farce, interlude, commedia dell'arte) occupy an important place. The article discusses the features of genre modifications of medieval farce in contemporary dramaturgy. A typology of contemporary farce is also suggested (three types are conventional farce, black farce and socio-political farce). Genre signs, features of the plot and of farce in the works of European dramaturgy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (M. Frein, M. Kamoletti, D. Orton, P. Schaeffer, E. Nelison, G. Adam, A. Bitton and others) are researched. Scientific (L. Smith, A. Sierz, S. Goncharova-Grabovskaya, N. Malyutina etc.) and author's (R. Cooney) reflections on the farcical genre module are considered.

La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas was published in Spain for the first time in 1499 as a comedy, and as a tragicomedy in 1502. The first Italian translation of the play was published in Rome in 1506 and gave birth to a parallel and complementary textual tradition on which the reception and translation of the play in other modern languages (such as French and German) were based. Given the wide success of Celestina in Italy, this essay focuses on the hybrid genre of the play, which can be placed at the crossroads of comic and tragic genres but also on the boundaries between narrative and theatrical modes of expression. It emphasizes the importance of Celestina ’s dialogic, parodic, and polyphonic structure, and its links with Dante’s Commedia and Boccaccio’s Decameron . Building on the “working hypothesis” of a Florentine genesis of Celestina , this essay explores its connection with humanist comedy and with Aretino’s comic-burlesque literature. La Celestina de Fernando de Rojas fut publiee en Espagne pour la premiere fois en 1499 en tant que comedie, puis en 1502, en tant que tragicomedie. La premiere traduction italienne de la piece a ete publiee a Rome en 1506 et a donne le jour a une tradition textuelle complementaire et parallele, laquelle en a par la suite nourri la reception et la traduction en plusieurs langues modernes (en francais et en allemand par exemple). Etant donne le grand succes que recut La Celestina en Italie, cet essai se penche sur le genre hybride de la piece, qui participe egalement des genres tragique et comique, et qui, en outre, se situe a la frontiere des modes d’expression narratif et theâtral. Ces observations soulignent l’importance de la structure dialogique, parodique et polyphonique de La Celestina , ainsi que ses liens avec la Divine Comedie de Dante et avec le Decameron de Boccace. De plus, suivant l’hypothese de travail d’une genese florentine de La Celestina , cet article explore ses relations avec la comedie humaniste et la litterature comique-burlesque de l’Aretin.

RESUMO Este artigo é oriundo da pesquisa resultante na tese de doutorado Antônio José da Silva: uma dramaturgia de convenções1. No presente texto, discute-se o princípio de carnavalização no teatro ibérico a partir de diferentes perspectivas teóricas, dentre as quais a de Mikhail Bakhtin. Nesse sentido, a partir da descrição da personagem-tipo do gracioso, o criado carnavalizado originalmente inserido no teatro pelos autores do Século de Ouro espanhol, pretende-se problematizar embates de classe e artifícios discursivos da narrativa tragicômica. Tal análise é embasada pela teoria de análise de textos barrocos ibéricos desenvolvidas em Espanha, nos estertores do século XX e no início do XXI, especialmente em Hermenegildo (1995). Desse modo, analisa-se como a personagem-tipo, seja em sua formulação tradicional masculina ou na feminina, como criada, participa das intrigas, de modo a tornar mais contundentes as questões centrais do enredo disparador. Como exemplificação da teoria trabalhada, trazemos a obra do autor português setecentista Antônio José da Silva, Precipício de Faetonte. Nela, é possível perceber a participação dessas personagens baixas entremeando a intriga principal: o que pode ser lido, em nossa perspectiva, como uma forma de carnavalização do teatro ibérico de tal período, dentro da perspectiva bakhtiniana. ABSTRACT This article derives from the research which resulted in the doctoral thesis Antonio Jose da Silva: a dramaturgy made of conventions.1 It discusses the principle of carnivalization in Iberian theatre from different theoretical perspectives, including that of Mikhail Bakhtin. Through an analysis of the stock character of the gracioso, the carnivalized servant figure originally introduced by the dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age, the intention is to problematize the class tensions and discursive artifices of the tragicomic narrative. This analysis is based on the theory for studying Iberian baroque texts developed in Spain at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, and which is particularly present in Hermenegildo (1995). This article therefore examines the ways in which this stock character, either in its traditional male version or as its female counterpart - the maid -, participates in the development of dramatic intrigue, amplifying the impact of the central issues of a given play’s main plot. To demonstrate the aforementioned theory, this article will examine the play Precipício de Faetonte by 18th-century Portuguese playwright Antonio José da Silva. In this work the actions of these low-status characters can be seen to be interwoven with the development of the central intrigue, a fact which, from a Bakhtinian perspective, can be interpreted as a form of carnivalization explored by the Iberian theatre of the period.

The critic Anthony Caputi identifies in John Marston's work an "internal consistency" that derives from his attention to "satire and satiricomic expression" (vii). This thesis argues that Marston's satire is informed by the strategic use of metatheatrical technique in his drama, and that this technique is prevalent regardless of genre. The function of this self-reflexive device is to continually foreground subversive interrogations of prevailing Jacobean socio-cultural practice, in the form of what may be termed dangerous dialogues. In each of the plays examined, Marston's characters attempt to exert control over language and other characters with self-conscious and extravagant role-playing. In defining and enacting a role for themselves, they aim to achieve an autonomous sense of self, and then to subordinate others within a 'plot', or worldview, with this reflexively acted and fashioned self at the centre. However, the intense doubleness of action and language that Marston archly exploits in order to promote social satire in his plays always militates against these attempts to unequivocally assert such power.Three of Marston's plays are analysed in order to demonstrate how he creates dangerous dialogues that critique social and cultural hegemonic ideologies. In the revenge tragedy Antonio's Revenge, it is seen how attempts by court figures such as Piero and Antonio to control and manipulate other characters with language and performance are attempts to assert a centred sense of self, and ultimately, reinforce what they see as social order. Throughout this play, the act of theatricality itself, the very technique employed by these characters to achieve power, in fact subversively reveals the artifice of socio-cultural conventions such as law and order, state power, and the divine right of rulers, questioning their status as self-evident social truths. Marston shows how it is impossible for any character to discipline the centrifugal force of language, containing as it inevitably does the voice of an oppositional other. It is the implicit awareness of this fact that forces the revengers in this play to resort to extreme violence and paradoxically destabilise social order in their attempt to affirm it.The second play examined, The Malcontent, uses the tragicomedy form to interrogate more closely the concept of authority, in particular the ducal authority sought by the figures of Altofronto/Malevole and Mendoza. In endeavouring to reclaim his role as Duke of Genoa, the usurped duke Altofronto adopts the role of the malcontent Malevole in order to attain his political ambition. However, his disguise calls for the voicing of dialogues that intensely condemn the role of Duke and the social hierarchy he presides over as artificial and randomly contrived. It is seen how these dialogues are not completely silenced by the play's attempt at closure. The central figure of the drama is an embodiment of the double-edged nature of language and performance that Marston explores in his plays; the voicing and enacting of one version of social convention necessarily and inevitably brings into being an alternative version. The two co-exist in an unresolvable dialogue that showcases the struggle of contending ideologies.In The Dutch Courtesan, Marston foregrounds the roles of women, and demonstrates how their dialogues continually unsettle the male characters' assertions of social power. Beatrice, Crispinella and Franceschina replicate females such as Maria, Mellida and Macquerelle who feature in the two earlier plays, but the women's voices are arguably given more space in The Dutch Courtesan. In focusing on gender as the battleground upon which the males attempt to assert their sense of autonomous masculine selves, Marston shows how the role-playing of the major male characters in fact potentially reveals how gender itself is an artificial construction. Figures such as the prostitute Franceschina and the maid Beatrice actually have the power to "feminise" the male characters. As Freevill and Cocledemoy combat these dangerous female dialogues by employing role-playing, their attempts to totally exclude female voices from their sense of selves merely work to reinforce their very presence. Their acts of role-playing are effectively acts of prostitution, implicating them in a performative trap with the anarchic doubleness of language at its base.This thesis aims to show that a sense of subversion results from Marston's strategy of displaying characters' self-reflexive role-playing. Used as means to assert an autonomous self and, finally, the hegemonic constructions of social order, Marston instead highlights the disorder that lurks just beneath the surface of these artificial constructions, and perpetually threatens to disrupt them. This disorder is the essential quality of language itself, this doubleness that continually challenges Jacobean socio-cultural orthodoxy. Instead of order, Marston posits anarchy as the natural condition of existence leading to oblivion; the fact that he dedicates his Scourge of Villaine "To euerlasting Obliuion" and that his epitaph reads 'OBLIVIONI SACRUM' perhaps reinforces that this was indeed a prominent theme of his life and work.

S’inspirant d’Aristote, de Quintilien et de Cicéron, les rhétoriciens anglais du XVIe siècle prescrivent le bon usage des figures et éreintent les métaphores inconvenantes ou trop audacieuses. Dans les romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale et The Tempest), Shakespeare se plaît à contrevenir à ces prescriptions qui brident l’inventivité du poète : l’une des stratégies les plus subtiles que développe le dramaturge pour s’affranchir de ces figures imposées est le déploiement de métaphores ravivées, qui consistent à réveiller des métaphores mortes pour y redonner une charge imagée voire y déployer un sens neuf. En d’autres termes, ces figures ingénieuses brisent les chaînes des métaphores mortes qui, à force d’usage, emprisonnent en elles des sens cachés. Dans les romances, les métaphores ravivées ont également ce pouvoir de libérer un potentiel comique, y compris au sein de scènes tragiques. D’ailleurs, l’objectif est de souligner l’impact qu’ont ces figures sur l’hybridité générique des pièces tardives. Par l’emploi astucieux de ces figures, Shakespeare s’affranchit des règles de pureté générique formulées par les néo-aristotéliciens sur le continent. Dès lors, une double libération voit le jour : en brisant les chaînes de la métaphore, qui n’est plus assujettie aux prescriptions rhétoriques, le dramaturge affranchit aussi ses pièces des carcans génériques. Inspired by Aristotle, Quintilian and Cicero, sixteenth-century rhetoricians in England prescribed strict rules to elaborate an appropriate figurative speech and vilified the use of far-fetched and unchaste metaphors. In his romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest), Shakespeare breaks away from these rules of decorum, which restrict the poet’s wit and imagination. One of his favourite – and probably most ingenious – strategies to unbind his tropes consists in reviving metaphors. Revived metaphors consist in restoring the visual and semantic power of dead metaphors; as a result, they often unleash new meanings that have been stagnant because of an excessive use through time. In the romances, revived metaphors also liberate laughter, even when scenes teeter on the brink of tragedy. Hence, this article aims at analysing how revived metaphors participate in creating generic hybridity in the author’s late plays. Through the daring use of revived metaphors, Shakespeare defies the generic purity that was advocated by neo-Aristotelians on the continent. Therefore, revived metaphors imply a double liberation: by breaking the shackles of dead metaphors as well as the rules of decorum, the playwright also frees his plays from generic confinement.

Based on a recently discovered typescript of his first play, The Eternal Thread, this chapter aims to situate Gunsam Lee (in Korean, Yi Geun-sam) as a playwright of tragedy rather than a playwright of comedy, as he has been commonly regarded. The play Lee wrote in English in the United States in 1958 clearly shows that he was interested in tragedy, at least in his earliest career as a playwright. Even his later plays are strongly tinged with a tragic sense of life, thus making his whole work a tragicomedy.

This essay aims at discussing some issues in the play The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare. Even though some may assume that the play is a comedy, the problem of its literary genre is a rather problematic issue today. Some critics debate its inclusion in the comedies, because it is not at all a funny play. The label ‘comedy’ did not suggest that it was a funny play in Shakespeare’s age. If some critics think that it is not a funny play, Shakespeare may have designed Shylock as a tragic character. In fact, the play’s effects of Shylock’s energy and tragic dimensions deeply influenced the audience in the moment when it was first staged. This essay first discusses the problem pathos and inwardness in Shylock’s speech. After that, it discusses the issue of literary genre and argues that it should be classified as a tragicomedy. Este ensayo tiene como objetivo discutir algunos temas de la obra El mercader de Venecia, de William Shakespeare. Aunque algunos pueden asumir que la obra es una comedia, el problema de su género literario es un tema bastante problemático en la actualidad. Algunos críticos debaten su inclusión en las comedias, porque no se trata en absoluto de una obra cómica. Esta discusión se basa principalmente en Maguire (2004), Gross (2006), Garber (2004) y Auerbach (2007a; 2007b). La etiqueta “comedia” no sugería que fuera una obra divertida en la época de Shakespeare. Si algunos críticos piensan que no es una obra cómica, Shakespeare puede haber diseñado a Shylock como un personaje trágico. De hecho, los efectos de la energía de Shylock y las dimensiones trágicas de la obra influyeron profundamente en la audiencia en el momento en que se representó por primera vez. Este ensayo primero analiza el patetismo y la interioridad del problema en el discurso de Shylock. Posteriormente, discute el tema del género literario y argumenta que debe catalogarse como una tragicomedia. Este ensaio tem como objetivo discutir algumas questões da peça O Mercador de Veneza, de William Shakespeare. Embora alguns possam supor que a peça é uma comédia, o problema de seu gênero literário é uma questão bastante problemática hoje. Alguns críticos questionam sua inclusão nas comédias, porque não se trata de uma peça engraçada. Essa discussão tem como base teórica principalmente Maguire (2004), Gross (2006), Garber (2004) and Auerbach (2007a; 2007b). O rótulo ‘comédia’ não sugeria que fosse uma peça engraçada na época de Shakespeare. Se alguns críticos acham que não é uma peça engraçada, Shakespeare pode ter projetado Shylock como uma personagem trágica. De fato, os efeitos da peça da energia e as dimensões trágicas de Shylock influenciaram profundamente o público no momento em que foi encenado. Este ensaio discute primeiro o problema de pathos e interioridade na fala de Shylock. Em seguida, discute a questão do gênero literário e argumenta que deve ser classificada como uma tragicomédia.

The Auto de Guiomar do Porto must be placed at crossroads of the Renaissance Auto and the sequels of the Tragicomedy of Fernando de Rojas. My analysis is based on the concept of «representation», understood in three different ways. In a first theatrical sense, I will point out the similarities and differences between the Portuguese Auto and the imitations and sequels of La Celestina . From the point of view of the history of reading, I will highlight the influence that reading has on the protagonist's behaviour. And from an iconographic perspective, I will relate some passages of the Auto to the celestinesque iconsphere and visual culture at the time.

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El presente artículo analiza las novelas históricas publicadas desde 1990 y protagonizadas por Fernando de Rojas para discernir qué contenidos se divulgan sobre La Celestina y su supuesto autor. Pretendemos demostrar que el género sigue, a pesar de la fabulación literaria, la versión de su doble paternidad, actualmente la más aceptada, pero no la única. Sin embargo, estas novelas también popularizan una de las tesis más controvertidas hoy: la de que Rojas sea descendiente directo de un condenado a la hoguera. En este caso la elección parece consecuencia no solo de la vigencia de los trabajos de Stephen Gilman como fuente, sino de la recepción de la obra a partir del siglo XX, tanto por la relevancia que adquiere el elemento inquisitorial como de la lectura más crítica de la Tragicomedia y la superposición del imaginario de la narrativa histórica.

This interdisciplinary study applies the theatrical theories of stage genres to examples of the early sound cinema, the 1930 Hollywood musicals Puttin’ on the Ritz (starring Harry Richman, and with songs by Irving Berlin) and Free and Easy (starring Buster Keaton). The discussion focuses on the phenomenon of the sad clown as a symbol of tragicomedy. Springing from Rick Altman’s delineation of the “sad clown” sub-subgenre of the show musical subgenre, outlined in The American Film Musical, this article shows that, in these seminal movie musicals, naïve melodrama and “gag” comedy coexist with the tonalities, structures, philosophy, and images of the sophisticated genre of tragicomedy, including by incorporating the grotesque into the mise en scene of their musical production numbers.

Critics rarely bring Ben Jonson's two Roman tragedies – Sejanus and Catiline – into proximity with Shakespeare's four Roman tragedies – Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. Yet doing so in terms of some dramatic features they share illuminates qualities of these plays not easily discernible by other approaches to them. This is especially the case when one adds Shakespeare's tragicomedy Cymbeline to this grouping. Establishing metaphysical perspectives based on ironic Christian allusions in all but one of Shakespeare's Roman plays throws into relief a Catholic dimension of Sejanus and religious dynamics of Catiline more involved in this tragedy than previous critics have realized. Bringing Jonson's and Shakespeare's Roman drama into mutual play also focuses the homeopathic, neo-Aristotelian catharsis of Coriolanus by reference to those in Sejanus and Catiline, as well as the dangerous position of historians and poets in Roman society, as evidenced by the fates of Cordus in Sejanus and Cinna in Julius Caesar. The perceived bad verse of the latter writer clinches judgment against him, even as the vile rhymes of the nameless poet in Julius Caesar disqualifies him from forging amity between Cassius and Brutus. Analysis of the complexity of the most complicated character in Jonson's and Shakespeare's tragedies, respectively Brutus and the Cicero of Catiline, reveals that Jonson's orator combines traits identified with three characters of Julius Caesar: Cassius's capacity for cunning practices, Antony's oratorical eloquence, and Brutus's tragically unrealistic, naïve thinking. This inquiry thus suggests something rarely said of Jonson's tragedies: that he was capable of giving a character in tragedy complexity if not equal to that produced by Shakespeare, yet nevertheless approaching it.

In 1926, Ramon Perez de Ayala published his last two novels: Tigre Juan and El curandero de su honra. The connection with Pedro Calderon de la Barca's El medico de su honra has been discussed by critics. Without overlooking the fact that Tigre Juan, the protagonist of both novels, approves the atavistic Calderonian honor code, the focus here is on a less obvious connection: La vida es sueno. The Golden Age masterpiece tells of Segismundo, whose transformation resembles in some aspects that of Tigre Juan. Unlike Segismundo, however, Ayala's tragicomic character is able to overcome the Spanish man's dissociative nature, perhaps the strongest atavism preventing him, and in turn Spain, from becoming truly modern. It is suggested that this transformation remains problematic because dissociation is not a sign of a bygone era, but one inherent in modernity, as evinced by the two world wars bookending the Tigre Juan novels.

Prologue: In 2011, Erika Tophoven published a memoir of her and Elmar Tophoven's thirty-five years of collaborating with Beckett on the translation of his texts into German. The memoir is part of a book chronicling their life in Paris translating mostly French contemporary literature. Entitled Gluckliche Jahre: Ubersetzerleben in Paris (Happy Years: Our Life as Translators in Paris), the book, published by Matthes and Seitz in Berlin, includes her answers to questions posed by fellow author and translator Marion Gees and several essays by Elmar Tophoven (1923-1989). What follows is my compte rendu in English, summarizing and in part paraphrasing the Tophovens' recollections of meetings with Beckett and the problems they faced translating his texts. Erika Tophoven has kindly proofed my account, clarifying details and providing additional particulars, for which I am grateful to her. The translations into English of Beckett's French are my own.ANGELA MOORJANIAfter attending the premiere of En attendant Godot at the Theatre de Babylone in January 1953, there was no doubt in Elmar Tophoven's mind that this was a play he must translate and without delay. Willing to risk translating Beckett's tragicomedy without first obtaining the rights, he deposited the completed German Godot on Jerome Lindon's desk three weeks later. Thus, Lindon having granted the translation rights, began Tophoven's intensive collaboration with Beckett that was to last thirty-five years (95).1On two spring afternoons in 1953, Top, as he was known to his friends, worked with Beckett on the Godot translation in the author's studio apartment near the Vaugirard metro station on the rue des Favorites. In a letter of 19 February 1953 about setting up an eventual meeting to work on the translation, Beckett intimated that it would take a lot of effort but that they would finally get good results (qtd. 99; see also Beckett 2011, 370). Collaborating with Beckett turned out to be an intense, pleasant, and highly instructive experience for the translator. Beckett, he recalls, was patient throughout, hiding any annoyance about faulty and imprecise interpretations. He made Top aware of repetitions in the play, or 'echoes,' as Beckett termed them, and questions, which like recurring musical motifs resurface again and again, time among them (96).Accompanied by his translator, Beckett attended the premiere of the German Warten auf Godot at Berlin's Schlossparktheater on 8 September 1953, where, on the request of the play's director Karl Heinz Stroux, he joined the actors on stage, even if reluctantly, for the applause after the performance (96, 98).After Godot, author and translator worked on the translation of the postwar trilogy, the Nouvelles, and Textes pour rien (Texts for Nothing). From the beginning, Top was aware that Beckett's texts left a translator little latitude, owing to the precise meaning and placement of each word. Taking Beckett as his mentor, he gleaned much about the art of translation from him, an apprenticeship that was to prove useful in translating not only Beckett but also other writers (95).Erika Tophoven met her future husband in fall 1956 while visiting Paris after graduating from Munich's Dolmetscher-Institut (School for Interpreters). At their first meeting at a party, Top asked her to translate Beckett's recently composed radio drama All That Fall into German. She took it on, not realizing the difficulties involved in a literary translation as compared to the texts assigned at the Dolmetscher-Institut. It took the pair weeks to arrive at a version that satisfied them. It was at that point that Top would ask Beckett for a meeting to read him a translation. From then on, Beckett was to give Erika his English texts to translate, other radio plays to begin with, thereby launching her career as a translator of literature (12-15).The Tophovens met with Beckett in his apartment on the rue des Favorites until he moved to a larger place on boulevard Saint-Jacques in 1960. …

espanolEl trabajo se propone analizar la obra anonima de inspiracion ariostesca Las bodas de Rugero y Bradamante (BNE, Ms. 16111), ateniendo a cuestiones formales y materiales, a la deuda que mantiene con su fuentey a su dimension escenica y tematica. La comedia se pone en relacion con la fortuna del episodio de las bodas en las letras espanolas —en particular, con la comedia perdida *Los amores de Rugero y Bradamante, parcialmente reconstruida a partir de los «papeles de actor» hallados en la Biblioteca Nacional— y con la tragicomedia francesa Bradamante(1582), de Robert Garnier. Con ello, se pretende reflexionar sobre el peso que pudo tener el ariostismo teatral en el proceso de formacion de la comedia nueva. EnglishThe scope of this study is to analyze the anonymous comedia Las bodas de Rugero y Bradamante (BNE, Ms. 16111), inspired in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. The paper addresses formal and material issues, the debt the play maintains with its source and its scenic and thematic dimensions. The comedy is put in relation to the fortune of the episode of the wedding of the ariostesque charac­ters in Spanish literature —in particular, with a lost comedy, Los amores de Rugero y Bradamante, partially reconstructed from the papeles de actor found in the Biblioteca Nacional— and with the French tragicomedy Bradamante (1582), by Robert Garnier. The aim is to reflect on the weight that theatrical Ariostism may have had in the development of comedia nueva.