1993 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Study of English Tragicomedy
| Project/Area Number |
03610236
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
英語・英文学(アメリカ語･アメリカ文学)
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Institute of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
TAMAIZUMI Yasuo Tokyo Institute of Technology, Engineering, Professor, 工学部, 教授 (80016360)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
NOZAKI Mutsumi Tokyo Institute of Technology, Engineering, Professor, 工学部, 教授 (70016632)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1991 – 1993
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| Keywords | Renaissance as an age of elegance / The deadlock of the Elizabethan drama / appearance of town-bred dramatists / dramaturgy of a blocked age / starting point of well-made plays |
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| Research Abstract |
'Tragicomedy' is a term applied to the tragedy that ends happily. Theoretically speaking, it may be a deterioration of dramatic art, but it was highly estimated in the Renaissance, an age of elegance that hates extremities. The discourse that it has all the good qualities of the dramatic art and rejects all the bad ones must also have contributed something to the creation of this new form.
This form was not, however, transported to England for a long time. There had already been many plays with a tinge of tragicomedy such as Damon and Pythias there, but they were only remains of religious drama whose fandamental structure is also a tragic story with happy ending.
In England tragicomedy first became a matter of serious concern in the end of the 16th century, when the third group of the Elizabethan dramatists appeared and began to pay more attention to the dramatic form rather than content, losing interest in the exploration of human hearts. But, its popularity had not a little to do with the blocked-up atmosphere of the age where audience went to the theater to learn their way of living from its question-begging dramaturgy.
English tragicomedy, which reached its heyday in the drama of Beaumont Fletcher and exerted a great influence on later Shakespeare, marked the starting-point of the so-called well-made English plays.
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