Tag Archives: Comedy

Why Do We Laugh? Various Theories

By Robin Bates | Published: September 8, 2014

Whether you see laughter as benign or hostile may come down to what kind of person you are.

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The Tragicomedy of High School Dating

By Robin Bates | Published: March 29, 2013

“She Stoops to Conquer” captures all the pain of adolescent dating failures.

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The Horror of Sex without Love

By Robin Bates | Published: September 16, 2011

Sex without love, the subject of several sex comedies this past summer, was also an issue explored by poets and playwrights in the British Restoration.

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The Greatest Clown of Them All

By Robin Bates | Published: November 12, 2010

Film Friday I have wonderful childhood memories of going to the movies with my parents. That’s why I am particularly fond of the opening scene of James Agee’s novel Death in the Family (1957), where six-year-old Rufus is shown attending a Charlie Chaplin short with his father. The year is 1915. I have seen many […]

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A Punch in the Gut of Excessive Sobriety

By Robin Bates | Published: October 30, 2009

Punch and Judy Let’s declare another comedy Friday and celebrate again the wit of Henry Fielding.  My first passage is a continuation of the mock epic encomium (expression of praise) to the book’s heroine that I posted yesterday: Reader, perhaps thou hast seen the statue of the Venus de Medicis. Perhaps, too, thou hast seen the gallery […]

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Henry Fielding’s Comic Touch

By Robin Bates | Published: October 23, 2009

I’ve just written a series of serious posts about literature and virtue, but since it’s Friday, let me go out of the week on a light note. Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones is not admired the way it once was, but one would be hard pressed to find any novel that is funnier. I share here […]

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