The Comicality and the Patheticness

  • Gianni Iotti University of Pisa
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6584
Keywords: relationships between comicality and serious, Christian myth, pathetic identification

Abstract

The paper starts from some references to the tradition of thought which, from Aristotle to Bergson, has insisted on emotional cauterization as a necessary condition for the triggering of laughter and has favored the sense of self-satisfaction and superiority of the self with respect to the comic victim. Then the paper proceeds to an historicization attempt of the relationship between subject and object of laughter, with particular reference to the Christian myth which, placing compassion at its center for a humiliated and painful figure (potentially ridiculous, according to the ancient vision), disrupts relations between the comic and the serious by introducing the possibility of a pathetic identification as an element that pervades the comic. It is in function of such ‘contamination’ – it is concluded – that some ambivalent aspects of comedy are emphasized in modern reflection and literature.     

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Author Biography

Gianni Iotti, University of Pisa

Gianni Iotti teaches French Literature at the University of Pisa. His main works focus on the relationships between fiction and history in the Eighteenth-century novel, on the themes of the body and moral sensibility in the literature of the Enlightenment, on Voltaire’s literary and historical works. Among his most recent publications: Modelli linguistici e metodi dell’interpretazione letteraria (edited by G. Iotti and G. Marotta), Pisa, University Press, 2018; Raccontare e conoscere. Paradigmi del sapere nelle forme narrative (edited by G. Iotti), Pisa, Pacini Editore, 2019; Voltaire, Théâtre complet, vol. I, L’Entrée en scène (edited by G. Iotti and R. Bret-Vitoz), Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2109.

Published
2019-12-27
How to Cite
IottiG. (2019). The Comicality and the Patheticness. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (3), 447-465. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6584
Issue
No 3 (2019): The forms and the days. Representations of everyday life in literature, audiovisual, visual and performing arts
Section
Monographic section II

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