Comedy, Tragedy, and Religion / Edition 1

by John Morreall

Overview

CHOICE2000 Outstanding Academic Title

Comedy, tragedy, and religion have been intertwined since ancient Greece, where comedy and tragedy arose as religious rituals. This groundbreaking book analyzes the worldviews of tragedy and comedy, and compares each with the world's major religions. Morreall contrasts the tragic and comic along twenty psychological and social dimensions and uses these to analyze both Eastern and Western traditions.

Although no religion embodies a purely tragic or comic vision of life, some are mostly tragic and others mostly comic. In Eastern religions, Morreall finds no robust tragic vision but does find significant comic features, especially in Taoism and Zen Buddhism. In the Western monotheistic tradition, there are some comic features in the early Bible, but by the late Hebrew Bible, the tragic vision dominates. Two millennia have done little to reverse that tragic vision in Judaism. Christianity, on the other hand, has shown both tragic and comic features—Morreall writes of the Calvinist vision and the Franciscan vision—but in the contemporary era comic features have come to dominate. The author also explores Islam, and finds it has neither a comic nor a tragic vision. And, among new religions, those which emphasize the personal self come close to having an exclusively comic vision of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791442067
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	05/27/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

John Morreall is Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of South Florida. Among his many works are Taking Laughter Seriously and The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, both published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Some Basic Connections

2. The Nature of Tragedy

3. The Nature of Comedy

4. The Tragic Vision versus the Comic Vision

5. The Tragic and the Comic Visions in Religion

6. Eastern Religions

7. Western Religions

8. New Religions

9. The Value of Humor in Religion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Comedy, Tragedy, and Religion informatively explores the fascinating categories of comedy and tragedy from the perspectives of Eastern and Western religions—the latter, of course, with their own instrinsic fascinations. The lucidity of this book will appeal to the non-academic and the scholar alike.

"Morreall's project is an ambitious one, sweeping from one world religion to another and from one artistic genre to another. His considerable success testifies to his breadth of knowledge and to his focused writing. The book is a lean, cogently argued contribution to an important but over-looked topic: relations between and among comedy and tragedy, and the world religions." —Earle Coleman, Virginia Commonwealth University

From the Publisher

How does a comic vision of life fit into a religious worldview? Doesn't a tragic vision of life better suit a religious vision? Morreall (Taking Laughter Seriously) provides an accessible survey of the roles that comic visions and tragic visions play in various religions. The author opens his study by examining what he sees as the connections between tragedy, comedy and religion. He argues that all three focus on the incongruities of life and the "disparity between the way things are and the way things should be." Thus, he notes, irony is a prominent feature in the attitudes of comedy, tragedy and religion toward the world. Morreall discusses the nature of tragedy and the nature of comedy, respectively, in two short chapters. He concludes that tragedy "recommends that we be emotionally engaged with incongruities and that we overcome and solve them." Comedy, on the other hand, "encourages an emotional disengagement from our own problems... and playfulness and laughter are comic paradigms for responding to real-life incongruities." The author asserts that religion uses elements of both comic vision and tragic vision to address the incongruities of life. In a series of five chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, he demonstrates the various ways in which each religion appropriates both comic and tragic features in its teachings and practices. For example, he argues that Eastern religions lack a tragic vision of life because they do not focus on an individual struggling amid suffering, while Western religions, on the other hand, do. After a thorough study of the uses of comedy and tragedy in religion, Morreall's engaging little primer concludes that humor "not only fosters virtue, but is best seen as itself a virtue... an intellectual and moral excellence of the highest order." (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this groundbreaking study, Morreall (religious studies, Univ. of South Florida) argues that tragedy, comedy, and religion have been closely linked since the heyday of ancient Greece. All three are concerned with the successes and shortcomings of life; our responses to tragedy and comedy help us understand and evaluate human experience. Morreall analyzes 20 psychological and social contrasts between the tragic and comic worldviews. Through five comprehensive questions on the theme of suffering, he examines elements of both tragedy and comedy from the perspective of Eastern and Western religions. The book closes with a survey of new religions and a chapter on the value of humor in religion. An excellent, well-written study on an overlooked topic, this book makes a unique addition to collections holding more general surveys of world religions and will appeal to scholars and general readers alike.--Michael W. Ellis, Ellenville P.L., NY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Reminding readers that both drama forms arose in ancient Greece as religious rituals, Morreall (religious studies, U. of South Florida) analyzes the worldviews of tragedy and comedy, and compares each with the world's major religious. He contrasts the two along 20 psychological and social dimensions, then uses the differences to analyze both eastern and western traditions. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

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