Comedy as genre, mode, and tradition in drama, narrative, prose, film and stand-up comic performance. Examples from the ancient world include Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and The Menaechmi by Plautus (Shakespeare’s source for Comedy of Errors). We will also study one additional Shakespeare comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde, play and film), a Jane Austen novel and film adaptation, City Lights with Charlie Chaplin, Bringing Up Baby, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, and Dr. Strangelove. Theories of comedy will include works by Henri Bergson, Northrop Frye, Sigmund Freud.
