The Cant of Comic Criticism

Book Reviews THE CANT OF COMIC CRIT ICISM Ofall the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting! Tristram Shandy THE ABSURD by Arnold F. Hinchliffe. London: Methuen & Co., 1969. 105 pp. and xii. SATIRE by Arthur Pollard. London: Methuen & Co., 1970. 84 pp. IRONY by D.C. Muecke. London: Methuen & Co., 1970.92 pp. COMEDY by Moelwyn Merchant. London: Methuen & Co., 1972. 92 pp. BURLESQUE by John D. Jump. London: Methuen & Co., 1972 . 77 pp. THE GROTESQUE by Philip Thomson. London: Methuen & Co., '972. 76 pp. FARCE by Jessica Milner Davis. London: Methuen & Co., 1978. III pp. COMEDY OF MANNERS by David L. Hirst. London: Methuen & Co., 1979. 122 pp. My list looks like an unpaid advertisement for Methuen, but that is not the intention, which is simply to survey aterrain. Since serious studies ofthe comic genres abound, I hoped for terminological nuance and rigor in a series labelled "Critical Idiom." At the least, I thought, there should be cross-reference between comic genres. I thought wrong. Unlike Twayne or Twentieth Century Views, Methuen does not demand adherence to a specific format. The Series editor, the late John D. Jump, was explicit on this point: "Because of this diversity of subject-matter, no attempt has been made to impose a uniform pattern upon the studies." Nor was any attempt apparently made to impose upon the authors an obligation to read their predecessors in the series, even in allied idioms. I do not know whether the monographs were contracted hit-or-miss, or merely printed hit-or-miss, but I will impose an order for this omnireview. Comedy seems to me an umbrella-word for comic subgenres, and I would Book Reviews 201 expect it to follow Clifford Leech's Tragedy, the first monograph in the Critical Idiom series. Instead, Merchant's Comedy absorbs aspects of tragedy: "This present essay has been much preoccupied with the power and status of comedy when it is set in a predominantly tragic context" (44). Rather than Comedy with acapital C, Merchant often examines comic moments within other genres, and rather than a definition of Comedy, he offers examples of the "comic mode." He begins with familiar contrasts between tragedy and comedy, aligning most critics with Aristotle in awarding laurels to the former. He issues a healthy warning against studying comedy through the nature of laughter. He then breezes through Bentley on Freud, Grotjahn, and G. Wilson Knight. Turning to Classical comedy, Merchant subdivides it into farce or situation comedy, humor or comic relief, and satire which becomes dramatic irony by a sleight of mind I could not follow. Moving on to Medieval and Renaissance drama, Merchant proposes what A.P. Rossiter first argued - that so-called comic relief in Shakespeare heightens the tragic effect. Merchant's subsequent chapters comment on comical satire, tragicomedy. and seasonal comic rituals. AbruptIy , he jumps from a view of comedy as amusement to one of comedy as resolution, and this elicits a rare and "modest" definition: " ... comedy [is] the permanent possibility of a happy resolution" (50). But how permanent can possibility be within a single play? Midway through his monograph Merchant realizes that it is difficult to distinguish comedy from the absurd, the grotesque, the ironic, and the farcical; again he summons example rather than definition - Absurd-Arrabal, FarceFeydeau . However, Merchant has no trouble distinguishing comedy from satire: "Dyson suggests that satire judges man against an ideal, while comedy sets him up against a norm .... The two modes then of satire and comedy would seem to oppose bitter glee and compassionate laughter." (42) - this after warning us away from laughter. Merchant devotes another chapter to Aristophanic versus Shakespearean traditions of comedy, assigning Pinter to the former and Brecht to the latter. Wide reader though Merchant is, his categories are debatable; Brecht honored Shakespeare not only by adapting him, but by imitating his tonal clashes and parallel scenes. Merchant ends inclusively if not conclusively: "And yet these diverse comic modes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, the ironic, the absurd, the witty jest and the laughter of urbane compassion are all part of a single art, are facets of the nature of...