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N Szh Ccunt%20girlN Goodlookingstrippedsingers E: We have two definitions here. (1) In
anthropological terms, a comedy of innocence is a ritualized
symbolic behavior (or set of such behaviors) designed to
alleviate individual or communal guilt about an execution
or sacrifice or to hide the blame for such an action.
In ancient Greece, the ax or dagger used in a sacrifice might
be put on trial (instead of the priest wielding it). The
sacrificial animal might be required to "volunteer" by
shaking its head or by walking up to the altar to eat the
grain sitting
on it. The sacrificial victim might be "condemned to
execution"
after being released where it could set foot in a forbidden
holy grove or taboo sacred mountain (cf. Exodus 19:12-13
and
Judges
11:30-40). In America, we see remnants of the comedy of
innocence in
customs such
as the 19th-century's hangman's black mask (to
erase the executioner's identity) or the custom of granting
the condemned prisoner's last request or final meal (to
alleviate any sense of cruelty on the jailer's part).
(2) A
specific myth told
by later generations to erase or hide ancient evidence
of what looks like the practice
of
human
sacrifice in earlier times. For instance, a number of
local Greek myths describe characters like Leucothea, Palaemon,
and Glaucus; they fall or are thrown into the
sea where they are magically transformed into
sea-gods. Given the relative insignificance of these
gods
in the Greek pantheon,
it is likely this sort of tale either (a) developed
out of local hero cults
or (b) the tale alludes
to an ancient
or prehistoric belief
that drowned sacrificial victims would live on as animistic spirits.
Another common version of the comedy of innocence
is the motif of
a human sacrificial victim (usually a child) who is miraculously
saved
(deus
ex machina) and
an
animal substituted
in his or her place. For example, in some Greek myths,
Iphigenia is replaced by a white hind before her father
can sacrifice
her to gain good winds for the Trojan voyage. Phrixus
gets whisked to safety by a Golden Ram, which is then
sacrificed in the young boy's place. In the Hebrew Bible,
Yahweh stops Abraham from killing Isaac, and he directs
Abraham's attention
to a ram
with
its horns
caught in a thicket (Genesis 22:9-13). Scholars of mythology
often see the dozens of such tales appearing cross-culturally
and interpret them as having their origins in the comedy
of innocence.
COMEDY
OF MANNERS: A comic drama consisting of five or three
acts in which the attitudes and customs of a society
are critiqued
and satirized according to high standards of intellect and
morality.
The dialogue is usually clever and sophisticated, but often
risqué. Characters are valued according to
their linguistic and intellectual prowess. It is the opposite
of the
slapstick humor found in a farce
or in a fabliau.
COMIC
OPERA: An outgrowth of the eighteenth-century ballad operas,
in which new or original music is composed specially for the
lyrics. (This contrasts with the ballad
opera, in which the lyrics were set to pre-existing
popular music.)
COMIC
RELIEF: A humorous scene,
incident, character,
or bit of dialogue
occurring after some serious or tragic moment. Comic relief
is deliberately designed to relieve emotional intensity and
simultaneously heighten and highlight the seriousness or tragedy
of the action. Macbeth contains Shakespeare's most
famous example of comic relief in the form of a drunken porter.
COMING-OF-AGE
STORY: A novel in which an adolescent protagonist
comes to adulthood by a process of experience and disillusionment.
This character loses his or her innocence, discovers that previous
preconceptions are false, or has the security of childhood
torn
away, but usually matures and strengthens by this process.
Examples include Wieland's Agathon,
Herman Raucher's Summer
of '42,
Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, Joyce's A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, and Jane Austen's Northanger
Abbey. The most famous examples are in German. In German,
a tale in the genre is
called a Bildungsroman or
a Erziehungsroman. Examples include
Goethe's
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and Thomas Mann's Königliche
Hoheit.
COMITATUS:
(Latin: "companionship" or "band"): The term describes the tribal
structure of the Anglo-Saxons
and other Germanic tribes in which groups of men would swear
fealty to a hlaford
(lord) in exchange for food, mead, and heriot,
the loan of fine armor and weaponry. The men who swore such
an oath were called thegns
(roughly akin to modern Scottish "thane"), and they vowed to
fight for their lord in battle. It was considered a shameful
disaster to outlive one's own lord. The comitatus was
the functional military and government unit of early Anglo-Saxon
society. The term was first coined by the classical historian
Tacitus when he described the Germanic tribes north of Rome.
COMMEDIA
DELL'ARTE: A genre
of Italian farce from the sixteenth-century characterized by
stock
characters, stock situations, and spontaneous dialogue.
Typically, the plot is an intrigue
plot and it involves a soubrette
who aids two young lovers in foiling the rigid constraints of
their parents. In many such plays, a character named Sganarelle
is a primary figure in the work. Often there is a zani,
or foolish-servant, who provides physical comedy in contrast
to the anguish of the young lovers. In the end, the couple achieves
a happy marriage. Commedia dell'arte may have influenced
Shakespeare's comedies, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor,
and Moliere's plays, such as L'amour Medecin, commonly
translated into English as Love is the Doctor.
COMMON
MEASURE: Also called common meter, common measure
consists of closed poetic quatrains rhyming ABAB
or ABCB, in which
the lines of iambic tetrameter (eight syllables) alternate with
lines of iambic trimeter (six syllables). This pattern is most
often associated with ballads
(see above), and it is occasionally referred to as "ballad
measure." Many of Emily Dickinson's poems are in loose
common measure using slant
rhyme, for instance:
Much
Madness is divinest Sense--
To a discerning Eye--
Much Sense--the starkest Madness--
'Tis the Majority
A fun and simple test to
recognize common measure in poetry is to take a stanza and
try singing it aloud
to a well-known tune written in common meter, such as "Gilligan's
Isle," "Amazing Grace," or "House of the Rising Sun." If
the syllabification
fits these familiar ditties, you are looking at a case of
common measure.
COMMON
METER: Another term for common
measure (see above).
COMMONIZATION:
The linguistic term for an eponym--a common word that is derived
from the proper name of a person or place. For instance, the
sandwich gained its name from its inventor, the fourth
Earl of Sandwich. The word lynch comes from Captain
William Lynch, who led bands of vigilantes to hang hoboes and
bums residing near Pittsylvania County. The verb shanghai,
meaning to kidnap or press into forced labor, comes from the
practices of conscription common in the oriental city of Shanghai.
The word stentorian comes from the loud-mouthed Stentor
in Greek legend, and herculean comes from the muscle-bound
Hercules, and so on.
COMPERT (plural:
comperta): Specifically, birth-tales
in Old Irish literature that detail
the conception and birth
of a hero. Examples include the Compert Con Culainn (Birth
of Cú Chulainn). Usually supernatural or extraordinary
events involve themselves in the conception, such as the Druid
Cathbad's seduction of Nessa after prophesying what the hour
would be lucky for (begetting a king upon a queen!) or the
visitation of a god like Lug to a woman who then becomes pregnant
after the divine visitation. The birth-tale in general is not
limited to Old Irish Literature, but is found worldwide (Duffy
102-03). Examples outside of Irish literature include the birth
of Jesus,
or the Buddha, or Leda and Hercules in Greek myth, Pryderi's conception in the First Branch of The Mabinogion, or King
Arthur's conception in Arthurian legends.
COMPLETENESS:
The second aspect of Aristotle's requirements for a tragedy.
By completeness, Aristotle emphasizes the logic, wholeness,
and closure
necessary to satisfy the audience.
COMPLEX METAPHOR: Another term for a telescoped metaphor.
COMPOSITE
MONSTER (in architecture, often called a chimera
Copyright Dr. L.
Kip Wheeler 1998-2012. Permission is granted for non-profit,
educational, and student reproduction. Last updated March 30, 2012. Contact: kwheeler@cn.edu Please
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