Comedy

In a modern sense, comedy is a genre of fiction that refers to any discourse or work intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, books and novels or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In Athenian democracy, the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters influenced the public opinion of voters. I can describe the theatrical genre of Greek comedy as a dramatic performance that puts two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agony or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a “Society of Youth” and a “Society of the Old.” A revised view characterizes the essential agony of Comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter. (Wikipedia)