An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit

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About this book

George Meredith asks why a really good comedy is so rare and what it takes to write one. He answers by looking first at society: the comic poet needs cultivated men and women, quick perceptions and some equality between the sexes. He sorts the opponents of laughter into those who never laugh, whom he names with a word borrowed from Rabelais, and those who laugh at everything. Molière is quoted early on. The essay first appeared in The New Quarterly Magazine in April 1877; this text follows an 1897 edition.

About the author

George Meredith

George Meredith was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) briefly scandalised Victorian literary circles.

More by George Meredith

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Book facts

Author: George Meredith
Reading time: About 80 minutes
Pages: 32
Language: English
Genre: Theater
Formats: PDF, EPUB, Read online