|
Modernity and Notes on Comedy The moderns are passionately concerned with history. History was a concern of antiquity; in the Middle Ages it was the chronicle which records the acts of God. One thing happens because of something which God did: "because" is the word which is most important. But history which followed the Middle Ages redefines what is real, who we are, what are our concerns. Fatalism and determinism are not the same. Fatalism is a mystical thing and unscientific, while determinism is scientific materialism. We are the products of heredity and environment and everything is explained through material. Dostoyevsky said freedom, choice, etc. needs a freedom of the soul to release us from materialism. The "I" to be different must occur in the soul , and therefore we must have God to free us from the material, determining body. Determinism does not make one a victim; one is a lawful agent, but that doesn’t mean he has any choice. Fatalism however, gives no choice at all. If one struggles with determinism, how can one have tragedy, for instance? A new form would need to be invented. Modernism struggles to define what is real. In a material world, there is no such thing as trivia; in such a world everything has meaning or may possess importance. In literature, this material meaning takes on may forms of expression: Hemingway flattens everything down; it’s all the same with no adjectives or adverbs for peaks and valleys. Joyce, on the other hand, raises everything to equal importance and thus universal. David Hume said let’s not talk of first causes; just say "I don’t know" and answer only the knowing. This is reflected in the modern, where terror reflects the feeling of not knowing what is going on. To be modern is to misfit. Nothing has permanence or stability. We ask one question repeatedly: "Why?" The 18th century was one of so-called "reason," in which people examined their relationship to society. Every age has a particular relationship with regard to the self and the "other"—17th century: self to God; 18th century: self to society; 19th century: self to self. In the late 19th century, people invented their own lives: whom to marry, what to do with one’s life, displacement from the land, machines affected their lives. The solitary power of the king, prince, or great leader is missing, and the group takes over. Individual heroes are gone; types are now important. With the change of feudal structure and the divine right of kings the entire structure fell so that new literature also focused on single persons, but now common man rather than nobility. This soon moved towards no individual hero but rather groups or types. Heroic, virtuous actions are now suspect, s Freud soon questions in people’s motivations in their actions. The modern period has a particular alliance of art and politics, more so than other periods. Literature which admits politics also raises the paradox of literature which specifically rejects politics. Drama impels one into an action while the novel may only entertain. The novelist remained novelists but the dramatists were quite often street activists. "When God died, He left politics"—Juno and the Paycock. Politics is secular theology; it is a universe with relationships and dynamics of power, which speaks as well of theology. Dante and Milton re two examples of this. The question becomes, why is politics suddenly so important? All the things that were to be gained in heaven now must be promised while living. Community is the parallel of communion. The brotherhood of man replaces the children of God. The stream which theology begins and politics ends is the same stream, the same current. Disaffection is a universal in the Western world. The dreams of the Middle Ages that God would help us with, the Renaissance began mixing with politics with great expectations. The modernist feeling is that we now know we’ve failed and disaffection becomes a universal. Another level begins with modernism: politics of the family. When God dies there is nihilism; following this people looked for a means of transcendence—humanity can know nothing but what it has made and knows about. There are three ages: 1) That of the poets, who created the myths and believed these things literally; everything was animated; religion began by treating these beliefs metaphorically; 2) in the next age we have comparative study, where people could be seen believing in similar beliefs treated somewhat metaphorically different. When the direct metaphor is lost the myth is turned into metaphor. Myth/religion is a half-way house, whereas nihilism is no house at all. The irony and skepticism in the final age, 3) that of nihilism, often leaves even politics behind—it is one of detachment and disaffection. "Time is a maniac spreading dust"—as this quote implies, dust represents a lack of life and lack of spirit. Modernism has a preoccupation with time, the totalitarianism of time, a pressure which makes us feel the scope of our futility—as in Marvell’s "had we but world enough and time." History is thus a preoccupation with time, and the Renaissance made us aware of own time as history; we create our own. In modernism it becomes a novel or fiction were history becomes the protagonist and makes up the narrative. Old and new collide and instantly point up transition, how history impinges upon its characters, which is historical realism. The split personality, that is, the split persona, increases in its condition from the Renaissance on. It is now impossible to be born and to die in the same world. This becomes increasingly more difficult, and drama demonstrates the impaling of the split persona in history better than other art forms. What this does to the sense of self is the problem of modernity and what the modern dramatist is concerned with. People, it is feared, may become obsolete in time. Aesthetics comes at a cost: the beautiful is put into opposition with the practical and this is the modern dilemma. Hallmarks of the modern are psychological imprisonment, psychological differences between rich and poor (no long one of simple state and position) in which the rich can be "care-less" (as F. Scott Fitzgerald phrased it) because they can forget so easily and simply turn off to the problem (in fact, the rich for Fitzgerald are like the Homeric gods: they show up, take an interest, interfere, and then leave events worse off and completely forgotten), and paralysis: sterility is everywhere and problems are left unresolved (Hamlet is often quoted at length). Literature in the eighteenth century is no longer a servant of other functions, such as religion, philosophy, etc. It no longer gives an answer to questions, or perhaps to special philosophical concerns in the minds of the creators. Literature is now reflection—we see this in Voltaire’s Candide, which concerns itself with how we feel, the times, our hopes, fears, etc. Literature says to keep yourself busy: "we must cultivate our garden"; growing food is not the issue but rather to stay busy, to do something and to keep going. Literature also poses a tension between spiritual and temporal power, asking which is the more powerful? Which should be? And how do they interact with one another? Up to the 18th century the belief was that the powerful convinced us, taught us the truth. The change was to empiricism, where the seeing, thinking, felling all act at the same time, and we determine truth by what we see and believe. Prior to the modern era, dreams were philosophical vehicles, and modernism gives us the psychological significance of dreams. People become as layered as civilization is. In the late nineteenth century, the unnatural conditions of civilization were examined, which led to the layering people, of psychological profiles. Is mankind determined? Determinism admits no tragedy; there can be no choice and no variables, which is why there is the question of whether modern tragedy can exist. To be modern is to misfit; after Darwin and in a world where people no longer live and die in the same world, everyone is essentially capable of being a misfit. Plato said that the "unexamined life is not worth living." Today, the question of consciousness and the purpose we give to life and attempt to then look up to or live out is a problem for the modern—will this be our undoing? Walpole said that life is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those that think," while Jane Austen said that "comedy is people who do not know themselves" (which corresponds to Shakespeare’s comic constructions of characters who do not recognize their own pretenses). While tragedy supposedly ends in self-knowledge (but this is debatable), in modern tragedy one feels that better left alone is more true. A great irony is that at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century there were many literary romantic writers: optimism, seeing a future for man, in such as D. H. Lawrence and G. B. Shaw. The true nihilists were predominantly and paradoxically Americans, whereas the romantics were predominantly Europeans. The racial unconscious—pulling off levels from millions of years of history was big with writers such as Jack London and Eugene O’Neill. Freud, however, looks to the theology which all people create in our societies. And society runs on entropy: the older it gets, the looser it gets. Drama responds instantaneously to current ideas—economic, political, psychological, historical, etc. Therefore much of the romantic notions or optimism for humanity find expression in drama first. Robert Browning said "make us happy and you make us good," which is a typically romantic feeling. But in the nineteenth century there is a sticking point: "natural selection." No end is now in view; God isn’t selective: humanity is the end of a causal, accidental chain. Modernity is also concerned with institutionalism and institutional change taking precedence over individual preferences. The institution makes bad people and produces a bad heart, which again an optimistic notion. The smallest human unit is two, said Shaw: one means individual, while two means society. Comedy Comedy comes from the Greek Komos: "revel, merrymaking" and Greek comedy ws from the beginning associated with fertility rites and the worship of Dionysus; thus with komos. From Aristophaes onwards it has been primarily associated with drama (except during the Middle Ages). Aristophanes (c. 448-c. 380 B.C.) wrote a variety of comedies which combine fine lyric verse, dance, satire, buffoonery, social comment, fantastic plots and remarkable characters. The other great Greek playwright of comedy was Menander (c.343- c. 291 B.C.). Apart from his Dyskolos, only fragments of his palys survive, but much is known about them because the Romans were familiar with them. Whereas Aristophanes is associated with the "Old" school of comedy, Menander is associated with the "New." As for Roman playwrights, Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.) and Terence (190-159 B.C.) wrote imitations of Menander. Themes were associated with young love and the plots tended to use stock characters and situations. There work served as models for the Renaissance. Between the death of Terence, however, and the late Middle Ages little comedy of note was produced; or, if it was, it has not survived. In the late Middle Ages, however, we ave the development of farce and comic interludes in the Mystery Plays. As for the theory of comedy thus far, there is not much to record. In Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes it from Tragedy by saying it deals in an amusing way with ordinary characters in rather everyday situations. One critic, after the 4th century—Evanthius—says that in tragedy life is to be fled from, whereas in comedy it is to be grasped. We may note that most of these writers from the Greeks to the Renaissance perceived comedy as something that imitated the common errors of life, which are represented in the most ridiculous and scornful ways so that few of us would want to be such a person—we watch, that is, subjectively. Satire The word satire comes from satira, a later form of satura "medley). It may be a cooking term in origin or, as Juvenal called it, a "mish-mash," or "farrago." At some stage a confusion came about between the Gree satyros and sature which led to the work being satyra and then, in English, satyre. Elizabethan writers, misled by the etymology, supposed that it derived from the Greek satyr "woodland demons." Whatever its roots, the satirist is thus a kind of self-appointed guardian of standards, ideals and truth; of moral as well as aesthetic values. He is a man (female satirists are very rare) who takes it upon himself to correct, censure and ridicule the follies and vices of society and thus to bring contempt and derision upon aberrations from a desirable and civilized norm. Thus satire is a kind of protest, a sublimation and refinement of anger and indignation. During the 20th century satire has been rare. Two of the main reasons for this lack are that it has been a period of much instability and violent change, and the humor industry has grown to such an extent that the satirist can hardly make himself felt except in the caricature and the cartoon.
|
|
This page maintained by Wayne Narey; suggestions and comments appreciated--please contact wnarey@astate.edu |