CLASS 2651 - The Comic Theatre

(crosslisted)
(also COML 2230, PMA 2635)(HB) (LA-AS)

Spring. 3 credits.

J. Rusten.

The origins of comic drama in ancient Greece and Rome, and its subsequent incarnations especially in the Italian renaissance (Commedia erudita and Commedia dell’arte), Elizabethan England, 17th-century France, the English Restoration, and Hollywood in the thirties and forties. Chief topics will be the growth of the comic theatrical tradition and conventions; techniques and themes of comic plots (trickster, parody, farce, caricature); and the role of comedy in society.