The Idea of Comedy: History, Theory, CritiqueFEATURE
A Discussion with Jan Hokenson
What brought about your interest in comic theory? I noticed many years ago that medieval comedy (especially the fool figure) was neglected in histories and theories of the comic, and I wondered why. Finding answers to that question uncovered several other kinds of gaps in accounts of the comic, so I pursued those too. Why, in your view, has the subject been neglected? Historically, theorists have been chiefly interested in organizing the history of comedy around a particular viewpoint, in order to propose a theory of their own. It was time for someone to do an impartial chronicle of the theories themselves. To which theory or theories of comedy do you feel closest? I've found that every theory has something to contribute to our understanding of the comic. We need them all. You say that the history of comic theory is not linear, but cyclical and expanding. Can we predict these recurrences, and how? Comedy is the artistic mode of error (which ranges from slipping on a banana peel to being duped by others and by ourselves). So comedy is always challenging our ideas of what is correct. A society's notions of "right living" are always evolving, and comedy will always keep pace, whether that means going back to basics, in a cyclical return, or setting new consensual standards in an expansive way. That's all we can predict!
--Lorna Marie McManus
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