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Comedy has a popular meaning (standup, along with any discourse generally intended to amuse), which must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece. The theatrical genre can be simply described as a dramatic performance pitting two societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye saw famously saw these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old" (The Anatomy of Criticism, 1957), but this dichotomy is seldom described as entirely satisfactory. A later view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes; in this sense, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse to ruses which engender very dramatic irony that provokes laughter (Marteinson, 2006). Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of comedy. Satire and political satire use ironic comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of humor. Parody borrows the form of some popular genre, artwork, or text but uses certain ironic changes to critique that form from within (though not necessarily in a condemning way). Screwball comedy derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations or characters. Black comedy is defined by dark humor that makes light of so called dark or evil elements in human nature. Similarly scatological humor, sexual humor, and race humor create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comedic ways. A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper class society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms and focuses on the foibles of those falling in love.

Contents 1 Derivation 2 See also 2.1 Forms 2.2 Styles 2.3 History of theatre 2.4 Definitions 2.5 Comedy events and awards 2.6 Lists of comedy performers 2.6.1 By nationality 2.7 Lists of comedy programs 2.8 Other lists 2.9 Related articles 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links

The word "comedy" is derived from the Classical Greek κωμῳδία, which is a compound either of κῶμος (revel) or κώμη (village) and ᾠδή (singing): it is possible that κῶμος itself is derived from κώμη, and originally meant a village revel.

In ancient Greece, comedy seems to have originated in bawdy and ribald songs or recitations apropos of fertility festivals or gatherings, or also in making fun at other people or stereotypes.^[1]

Aristotle, in his Poetics, states that comedy originated in Phallic songs and the light treatment of the otherwise base and ugly. He also adds that the origins of comedy are obscure because it was not treated seriously from its inception.^[2]

The word came into modern usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time, passed through various shades of meaning. In the middle ages it simply defined a story with a happy ending; thus some of Chaucer's tales are called comedies, and in this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Divina Commedia.

The adjective "comic" (Greek κωμικός), which strictly means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage, generally confined to the sense of "laughter-provoking". The phenomena connected with laughter and that which provokes it has been carefully investigated by psychologists and agreed upon the predominating characteristics are incongruity or contrast in the object, and shock or emotional seizure on the part of the subject. It has also been held that the feeling of superiority is an essential, if not the essential, factor: thus Hobbes speaks of laughter as a "sudden glory." Modern investigators have paid much attention to the origin both of laughter and of smiling, as well as the development of the "play instinct" and its emotional expression.

As comedy progressed through the ages, it progressed onto television and film.

• Bouffon comedy
• Comedy film
  • Anarchic comedy film
  • Gross-out film
  • Parody film
  • Romantic comedy film
  • Screwball comedy film
  • Slapstick film
• Comic novel
• Dramedy
• Improvisational comedy
• Musical comedy
• Stand-up comedy
  • Alternative comedy
  • Impressionist (entertainment)
  • One-liner joke
  • Comedy genres
• Sketch comedy
• Television comedy and Radio comedy
  • Situation comedy
• Tragicomedy

Main article: Comedy genres

• Adage
• Alternative Comedy
• Black comedy
• Ethnic Comedy
• Fantasy
• Irony
• Observational
• Parody
• Political satire
• Satire
• Situation comedy
• Slapstick
• Fuller-ism

• Ancient Greek comedy, as practiced by Aristophanes and Menander
• Ancient Roman comedy, as practiced by Plautus and Terence
• Burlesque, from Music hall and Vaudeville to Performance art

• Citizen comedy, as practiced by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson
• Clowns such as Richard Tarlton, William Kempe and Robert Armin
• Comedy of humours, as practiced by Ben Jonson and George Chapman
• Comedy of intrigue, as practiced by Niccolò Machiavelli and Lope de Vega
• Comedy of manners, as practiced by Molière, William Wycherley and William Congreve
• Comedy of menace, as practiced by David Campton and Harold Pinter
• comédie larmoyante or 'tearful comedy', as practiced by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée and Louis-Sébastien Mercier
• Commedia dell'arte, as practiced in the twentieth-century by Dario Fo, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Jacques Copeau
• Farce, from Georges Feydeau to Joe Orton and Alan Ayckbourn
• Jester
• Laughing comedy, as practiced by Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Restoration comedy, as practiced by George Etherege, Aphra Behn and John Vanbrugh
• Sentimental comedy, as practiced by Colley Cibber and Richard Steele
• Shakespearean comedy, as practiced by William Shakespeare
• Dadaist and Surrealist performance, usually in cabaret form
• Theatre of the absurd, used by some critics to describe Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet and Eugène Ionesco

^[3]

• Comedian
• Comedy club

• British Comedy Awards
• Canadian Comedy Awards
• Cat Laughs Comedy Festival
• Edinburgh Fringe Festival
• Halifax Comedy Festival
• HBO Comedy Arts Festival
• Just for laughs festival
• Melbourne International Comedy Festival
• New York Underground Comedy Festival
• Vancouver Comedy Festival

• List of comedians

• List of British comedians
• List of Canadian comedians
• List of Finnish comedians
• List of German language comedians
• List of Italian comedians
• List of Mexican comedians
• List of Puerto Rican comedians
• List of Indian comedians

• British sitcom
• British comedy
• Comedy Central - A television channel devoted strictly to comedy.
• German television comedy
• List of British TV shows remade for the American market
• Paramount Comedy (Spain).
• Paramount Comedy 1 and 2.
• TBS (TV network)
• The Comedy Channel (Australia)
• The Comedy Channel (UK)
• The Comedy Channel (USA) not to be confused with HA! - channels that have merged into Comedy Central.
• The Comedy Network, a Canadian TV channel.

• List of comedies
• List of New York Improv comedians

• Humour
• Joke
• Laughter
• Rule of three (writing)

• Aristotle, Poetics.
• Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
• Marteinson, Peter (2006). On the Problem of the Comic: A Philosophical Study on the Origins of Laughter, Legas Press, Ottawa, 2006.
• Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur Wallace
  • Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy , 1927.
  • The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, 1946.
  • The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 1953.
• Raskin, Victor, The Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, 1985.
• Riu, Xavier, Dionysism and Comedy, 1999. [2]
• Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Wiles, David, The Masked Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance, 1991.

Comedy at the Open Directory Project