In these essays Northrop Frye addresses a question which preoccupied him throughout his long and distinguished career - the conception of comedy, particularly Shakespearean comedy, and its relation to human experience.
In most forms of comedy, and certainly in the New Comedy with which Shakespeare was concerned, the emphasis is on moving towards a climax in which the end incorporates the beginning. Such a climax is a vision of deliverance or expanded energy and freedom. Frye draws on the Aristotelian notion of reversal, or peripeteia, to analyse the three plays commonly known as the 'problem comedies': Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida, showing how they anticipate the romances of Shakespeare's final period.
- ISBN10 0710805152
- ISBN13 9780710805157
- Publish Date June 1983 (first published 1 January 1983)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 November 1993
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Prentice Hall Europe (a Pearson Education company)
- Imprint Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf
- Format Paperback
- Pages 100
- Language English