- Anthropologie und Medialität des Komischen im 17. Jahrhundert (1580–1730), and: Literarische Hochkomik in der Moderne. Theorie und Interpretationen
Anthropologie und Medialität des Komischen im 17. Jahrhundert (1580–1730) presents eighteen essays developed from material originally discussed at a conference organized in 2005 by the Internationale Andreas Gryphius Gesellschaft. As the very lucid introductory essay reminds us, the aspect of the comic has languished as the "Stiefkind" of literary scholarship in the German Baroque both because of stifling preconceptions about the period and the influence of generalizations about comedic literature developed for other historical contexts, most notably in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. The collection maintains a highly commendable approach to those generalizations, working through the theoretical material developed for other contexts and testing it against historical documents from this period through a consistent and well-defined set of questions. The scholars in this collection show a dependable instinct for what is funny, and they also distinguish between the phenomenon of ephemeral laughter and the powers of wit and of humor that enter into the struggles over larger interests in culture and politics. At the same time, the project as a whole simplifies its task by treating comedy as an anthropological phenomenon, which in scholarly practice means: as something that somebody else has laughed at. This permits scrupulous discipline about distinguishing between what audiences in the baroque period seem to have found funny as opposed to what we might today.
Clearly one cannot but welcome a study of such quality since this approach determines quite definite objects of study in the various essays it comprises, and the resulting clarity of purpose and execution are much to be admired. It certainly loses none of its luster by comparison with Anja Gerigk's book, and yet reading them side by side does leave one missing something that neither achieves. Anja Gerigk places the larger problem of comedy for philosophy and aesthetics more directly at the center of her concerns, but the resulting theoretical labors founder conspicuously in a welter of undisciplined assertions. For this reason, reading Literarische Hochkomik in der Moderne constantly highlights exactly what it is one felt so solid and so steadily achieved by the accumulating efforts on baroque comedy.
Scholarship on lyric writing does not have to be lyrical, an analysis of tragedy scarcely needs to be tragic, and criticism of comic literature certainly does not have to be funny. Nonetheless, a scholarly journey through such material will wander strangely if the investigation does not draw, as the case may be, on an individual response to [End Page 100] the defining mood of lyric forms, a feeling for the stature of tragic writing, or some bright sense of the humorous. Anja Gerigk has surely alighted on an important point of departure when she addresses the poverty of existing theories that deal with comic effects, but reaching the conclusion that modern writing can qualify as comedy "ohne [ … ] komisch zu wirken" (228) reflects flight away from that question. Instead, her book pursues a quite distinct exercise in theoretical language. The pursuit of theory clearly does have its own moods; nonetheless laughter erupts at a moment of recognition, and a theory of the comic has to recognize that recognition. A theory that fails to identify what makes things funny is a theory of something else.
Literarische Hochkomik in der Moderne attempts to shape a connecting structure that joins the social and cultural phenomenon of the comic to Niklas Luhmann's work on systems and social organization. Gerigk is clearly a competent exponent of Luhmann's work, yet the process of dovetailing the two realms results in some very loose fits. The second half of her book does arrive at a discussion of texts by Kleist and Büchner that have a canonical claim to be comedies, but seldom engages those points in their writing where they are comic...