Tolkien's Funny Bone

[jallanite]

You seem to be correct about Dante’s use of comedy. But Arabic works dealing with comedy were very important.

Aristotles’s Poetics was translated into Arabic in medieval times, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and philosophers, such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes.

They applied Aristotle’s dictums to Arabic poetic themes and defined comedy as simply the “art of reprehension”, and made no reference to light and cheerful events or happy endings. Comedy was translated as hija (satirical poetry). Many early European critics followed this and defined comedy as only satire. Admittedly Dante seems not to have done so, following some other tradition.

My understanding is that it was these Arabic writings that were one of the main foundations of western critical theory. But these Arabic writings were indeed not responsible for comedy meaning any “low” poem.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Unfortunately

1) The second book of the Poetics, covering comedy, was lost, and
2) The Arabic translation of the first book, on tragedy, was a very bad one (IIRC an indirect one via Aramaic)

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Incidentally, the morning after the Birthday Party, especially Bilbo's parting giftes, is very funny.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Unfortunately

1) The second book of the Poetics, covering comedy, was lost...

One of the central plot points of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Great book!

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Unfortunately

1) The second book of the Poetics, covering comedy, was lost, and
2) The Arabic translation of the first book, on tragedy, was a very bad one (IIRC an indirect one via Aramaic)

True enough, although the source for the Arabic version of Aristotle’s Poetics was actually in Syriac, a late descendant of Aramaic.

That this translation is now partially lost is irrelevant because it was complete when early Arab commentators used it. Indeed, that the Arabs were using a bad translation helps explain some of their misinterpretations.

The surviving works were influential in medieval Europe, particularly Avarroes (who indeed did not have access to the Poetics). Late medieval and Renaissance writers sometimes preferred Avarroes’ interpretation to better translations because they preferred Avarroes’ humanism.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes for a reasonable discussion.

Again, this has nothing to do with Dante’s use of Comedy as the name of his poem.