Russ McDonald has this shrewd comment about the combination of slapstick comedy and satisfied resolution in MSND : “Even as we anticipate a happy ending, we take pleasure in watching shenanigans, pretension, and the well-aimed custard pie. This tension amounts to a contest between the end and the middle: The resolution provokes the laughter of satisfaction; the comic conflict, the laughter of scorn.” This, I think, is a wonderful way to describe the difference between the old comedy of Aristophanes and the comedy of Christian literature. The latter does not delete the slapstick, the scorned, or the satirical; but it embeds this in a larger framework where what James Wood has called the comedy of forgiveness reigns.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry
On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…
The Return of Blasphemy Laws?
Over my many years in the U.S., I have resisted the temptation to buy into the catastrophism…
The Fourth Watch
The following is an excerpt from the first edition of The Fourth Watch, a newsletter about Catholicism from First…
