Comic Versus Tragic Worldviews

Comedy was invented in ancient Greece shortly after tragedy, and the two forms of drama were often performed together. From Aristotle's Poetics [Page 157]on, tragedy has been ranked higher than comedy. Tragic heroes, Aristotle said, are better than most people, while comic characters are worse. The standard assessment is that tragedy is serious and “heavy,” while comedy is nonserious and “light”: In tragedy, we feel emotions like pity and admiration for noble characters, while in comedy we laugh at the shortcomings and antics of buffoons. This entry contrasts the comic and the tragic worldviews with respect to the responses they evoke. It then discusses the impact of historical changes on the usefulness of those responses and presents a perspective from which the comic can be seen as superior to tragedy.

Today, we apply the words comic and tragic far beyond drama and literature. We see events in our lives as comic or tragic and can view a person's whole life that way. Indeed, we can look at what philosophers call the human condition as comic or tragic. Many writers have spoken of the tragic vision of life, which some have contrasted with the comic vision of life.

Watching comedies and tragedies fosters emotional responses, not only while we are in the theater, but also when we face situations in our own lives similar to the ones in comic and tragic stories. Comedy and tragedy embody worldviews, or philosophies of life, and so they provide a kind of education in how to live. This entry focuses on the comic and the tragic in this broader philosophical sense, rather than on the narrower concept of comedy and tragedy as literary genres.