Public demand for comedy has always been high in the
German-speaking countries, but the number of comic dramas that have
survived is relatively small. Those which are still read or
regularly performed all have a serious purpose, and this collection
of fourteen essays on the most distinguished of them shows how
laughter can be exploited to treat personal, moral, and social
problems in a way that would not be possible in tragedy. The texts
range from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century, and no
fewer than half of them are by Austrian writers. The contributors
show how these plays are often subversive, regularly arousing an
uncomfortable, self-challenging laughter, and how they treat such
widely ranging subjects as language and communication, the
complications of the sex drive, the inflexibility of the Prussian
mind, and the behaviour of Austrian celebrities during the Third
Reich. The essays are all written by specialists in the field and
were originally delivered as lectures in the University of
Cambridge.
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