Tragicomedy

Tragic Comic masks of Ancient Greek theatre represented in the Hadrian's Villa mosaic.

Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending.[1] Tragicomedy, as its name implies, invokes the intended response of both the tragedy and the comedy in the audience, the former being a genre based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis and the latter being a genre intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter.

  1. ^ Dewar-Watson, Sarah; Eds. Subha Mukherji and Raphael Lyne (2007). "Aristotle and Tragicomedy." Early Modern Tragicomedy. Brewer. pp. 15–23. ISBN 978-1-84384-130-2. Retrieved 26 January 2012.