First, the origin of tragedy and comedy theory
1. The theory of tragedy. Tragedy theory originated from the tragic art Aristotle: in the history of western aesthetics, Aristotle (poetics) really laid the foundation of tragedy theory. Hegel: put forward the theory of "contradiction and conflict" of tragedy. His greatest contribution to aesthetic theory lies in the analysis of tragic phenomena by dialectical thinking. People think that tragedy stems from the division of ideas. He saw that both sides of this tragic conflict were reasonable and one-sided. Nietzsche believes that the tragedy is related to two spirits of ancient Greece, namely Apollo spirit and Dionysus spirit. The sun god represents the dreamy state and static state of plastic arts; Dionysus represents the state of intoxication and the excitement of music art, and Kierkegaard, the father of western existentialism, put forward a new subjective thought, affirming the transcendence of tragedy. Characteristics of tragedy. First, tragedy shows the affirmation of the value of life existence through the negative experience of life existence; Secondly, the aesthetic conflict of tragedy embodies the conflict and transcendence between man and nature, society and itself; Thirdly, the emotional experience of tragedy is a deep experience of life practice.
2. Comedy theory. Plato was the first person to discuss comedy in western aesthetic theory. Kant discussed the principle of comedy from the psychological effect of comedy. Hegel reveals the causes of comedy in the comparison between tragedy and comedy from the viewpoint of contradiction and conflict, which is more profound and more in line with the essence of comedy. Marne: I think comedy is essentially a conflict between two social forces. It is the negation of the old things by the new things after their victory or when they are about to win, so that "mankind can bid farewell to the past happily." Bakhtin, who put forward the famous thought of "carnival", believes that carnival culture and grotesque style related to comedy culture have the function of deconstructing ideology and social order. The characteristics of comedy. First, comedy contains profound social reality content, which is manifested in the form of confusion with reality; Secondly, comedy is characterized by disharmony and absurdity. Thirdly, the emotional form of comedy is mainly laughter.
Second, the analysis of tragedy and comedy.
Aesthetic form of tragedy
Aristotle believes that the special effect of tragedy lies in arousing people's "pity and fear", and this effect can only be realized when "a person has encountered an unfortunate fate". Hegel believes that the characteristics of tragedy are rooted in the conflict between two opposing ideals and forces with sufficient justification, which ended in mutual destruction and reached a settlement before "eternal justice". Engels believes that the essence of tragic conflict is "the inevitable requirement of history is that this requirement is actually impossible to achieve." The connotation of tragic beauty lies in the process that the practical subject embodying human existence is temporarily denied and finally affirmed. The survival practice with positive value has been violated and destroyed in the inevitable social and historical conflicts. This process and its result caused intense pain, but it was overcome and surpassed by the courage and ideal power of human existence and a stronger sense of history and the universe, thus turning pain into pleasure and causing deep agitation and excitement of emotions, thus obtaining a special aesthetic experience.
As an aesthetic form, tragedy has existed in ancient human society, and its appearance is based on the prosperity of this tragic form of drama. Ancient Greek society produced three famous tragic writers, Aeschylus, Sophocles and euripides. Almost all of their works are permeated with the theme of "fate", so ancient Greek tragedy is also called fate tragedy, and it is the theme of fate that establishes the basic connotation of tragedy as an aesthetic form.
From the perspective of practical ontology aesthetics, people exist in the world, and in the face of nature, society and endless unknown world, conflict and opposition are inevitable. As a result, the "view of fate" based on human finiteness naturally arises, and people attribute all the unknowable factors that oppose and conflict with themselves to fate; Accordingly, in the face of the fiddling of fate, whether blindly following or resisting, it constitutes a life situation; The failure to fight against fate has also formed a tragic experience. This tragic experience condenses into aesthetic knowledge, rises to aesthetic experience, and finally forms aesthetic form. Therefore, tragedy arises from social contradictions and conflicts, and the two sides of the conflict respectively represent two opposing levels of life survival practice. However, in this conflict of fate and this struggle for existence, the one who believes in justice or truth, goodness and beauty always inevitably leads to failure, death and destruction. Here, the "finiteness" of human beings constitutes the whole consciousness of tragedy. But the significance of tragedy lies in that it not only shows the existence of conflict and destruction, but also shows resistance and struggle, which is the most fundamental reason why tragedy has become an aesthetic form. There is no tragedy without struggle, and conflict, struggle and destruction are the three core factors that constitute the connotation of tragedy.
Aristotle, an ancient Greek scholar, made a comprehensive summary of the practice of ancient Greek tragic art, and put forward the essence of tragedy after studying excellent works: "Tragedy is the imitation of a serious, complete and long action; His medium is language, and all kinds of pleasant sounds are used in all parts of the play. The way of imitation is to express the actions of the characters, not to use narrative methods to purify this emotion by causing pity and fear. "
Hegel introduced the dialectical theory of contradiction and conflict into the theory of tragedy, and proposed that the essence of tragedy is the conflict between two social obligations and two realistic ethical forces. Because both sides insisted on their own ideals and the cosmic forces they represented, they were all one-sided, so they all ended in conflict, which led to a tragic ending.
Engels raised this conflict to the height of human society. The connotation of conflict and transcendence of tragedy is not only personal fate, but also the value of human existence and the deep attribute of conflict and transcendence of social existence. Therefore, in aesthetics, tragedy shows the powerlessness and powerlessness of life, but it always ends in failure, but it does not imply negative life significance; On the contrary, tragedy contains positive meaning in life, because the core of tragedy aesthetics is the struggle against fame and conflict, and it is precisely because in the face of powerful objects, people know that they can't match but still fight, which shows the true meaning and value of human survival practice.
Tragedy, as an aesthetic form, firstly demonstrates the affirmation of the value of human existence through the negative experience of human existence. As far as the process of perceptual management is concerned, it often presents difficulties and twists and turns to the aesthetic subject, and its existence as a tragic subject is suppressed, destroyed and destroyed, thus offsetting the ideal value of the aesthetic subject. However, the tragic subject shows the spiritual governance or transcendence of the object, and shows the self-confidence and affirmation of its own strength, so that the aesthetic value is generally manifested in the process of conflict and struggle between the subject and the object in aesthetic existence, which is actually a negative experience of life existence. Secondly, the aesthetic conflict of tragedy embodies the conflict and transcendence between man and nature, society and itself. Looking at all kinds of tragic conflicts in historical development. For example, the ancient Greek tragedy King Oedipus reflects the struggle between human existence and ruthless fate, and Prometheus reflects the conflict between man and nature and society. China's classical books, such as Yuan He's A Dream of Red Mansions, preach the value of freedom and liberation of human existence. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet shows the powerlessness and helplessness of individual destiny under the strong pressure and destruction of society. Another example is Balzac's novel Gao Laotou, which reveals the situation of personal existence, the lament of emotional conflict, and people's questioning about their insurmountable weaknesses and destiny. It is this conflict experience of human existence that constitutes the basic aesthetic value of tragic art. Finally, the emotional experience of tragedy is the profound experience of human existence in the world. The aesthetic experience of tragedy not only stays in the category of individual emotions such as pity and fear, but is based on the reflection of human destiny by existence. Therefore, tragedy is not the expression of personal daily emotions, nor the superficial compassion and pain, but the great concern and profound experience of human destiny in the practice of survival. This kind of emotional display is a kind of aesthetic pleasure, and it is a reflection and transcendence of the whole human destiny in the practice of survival.
Aesthetic form of comedy
Comedy is an artistic type and an aesthetic form, which has experienced a historical development process from artistic form to aesthetic form. In people's emotions, comedy is based on "laughter". Therefore, the discussion of laughter and its causes has become the core of comedy theory. Laughter is an instinct of human beings and a special aesthetic experience. It contains both the mechanism of happiness and the venting of provocation. Comedy also includes comedy, satire, humor and other secondary forms. This is because there are funny factors in comedy, such as misconduct, exaggeration, inversion, deformation, obvious falsehood, hypocrisy, self-contradiction, etc., which can also cause laughter. Comedy is often used to evaluate a social and historical phenomenon. Hegel thinks that comedy is "image is better than concept", so it shows the emptiness of rational content. The laughter of comedy contains human affirmation of human value, truth, goodness and beauty, which is an important reason why comedy has aesthetic value and can arouse people's aesthetic pleasure. Comic laughter is a kind of strict laughter, because it contains profound rational criticism and sharp irony, so noble comedies are often close to tragedy.
Comedy is a form of drama in ancient Europe. Different from tragedy, comedy belongs to the form of folk art, so early theorists studied comedy in the sense of artistic form, not in the aesthetic sense. As Aristotle thought, "comedy is an imitation of bad people, but" bad "does not mean all evil, but ugliness, one of which is funny. A funny thing is something wrong or ugly that won't cause pain and harm. " In modern times, comedy is abstracted from art form and becomes an aesthetic form. Kant believes that the psychological feature of comedy is laughter. "Laughter is a strong expectation that suddenly turns into nothingness." Hegel believes that the conflict between the absolute truth in the history of drama and individual real cases makes the protagonist pursue worthless illusory things, which makes it ridiculous. "Comedy fully supplements the shortcomings of tragedy with upside-down plastic arts, and highlights the free proliferation of subjectivity in absurdity and absurdity until it is solved."
Judging from the expression of people's aesthetic feelings, the prototype of comedy is primitive carnival. In primitive witchcraft activities, in order to express admiration and gratitude to the gods, people often hold ceremonies, at which people can laugh heartily, perform imitation performances, exaggerate the victory over enemies or evil spirits, and laugh at ugly objects. Through the comic ridicule of the other party, the purpose of comedy is achieved. Of course, it contains more people's social life and thinking about people's existence. In this way, the emotional form of comedy art rises to the aesthetic form of comedy. The value carrier of comedy can only be works of art.
The common feature of comedy is the deviation between form and content. In reality, comedy has some illusions, so it is not easy to see the essence of comedy. Art can use exaggeration, deformation and other artistic means to reveal the truth after illusion and highlight comedy. Only by uncovering the contradiction between essence and external phenomena, content and form, and uncovering the wrong deviation, can comedy really be formed. Therefore, Mr. Lu Xun said that "comedy is to tear up a worthless life for people to see", that is, to tear apart the illusion and disguise and expose the essence. The exposure after tearing up the illusion and disguise makes the object smaller and more empty, pitiful and worthless, and people can't take it seriously, so the sense of comedy must be reflected in laughter. Laughter here contains profound rational criticism and sharp irony, arousing people's confidence and courage to bury the past, so Marx said that comedy enables "human beings to bid farewell to the past happily." Comedy also has new connotations and meanings. Become an aesthetic form. Comedy is different from tragedy and has its own characteristics.
First of all, drama contains profound social reality content, which is expressed in the form of confusion with reality. Comedy is to expose and deny this old thing whose content and form are disordered and deviate from the phenomenon in essence, so it can directly express human ideals and self-confidence, unlike tragedy, which can only indirectly express human ideals and self-confidence in the middle of destruction and destruction. There are two forms of comedy, one is satire and the other is humor. Satire is the exposure and ridicule of ugly things, and the system gains the affirmation and trust of just behavior. When the ugliness that seems powerful and pretends to be just is exposed, it exposes its inherent hypocrisy and produces ridiculous effects. Humor, on the other hand, is a mild satire, often a kind satire on people's own shortcomings, including tolerance of human weakness and affirmation of people's good nature.
Secondly, comedy is characterized by disharmony and absurdity. Generally speaking, comedy is not harmonious in content and form, and the violation of reality and appearance makes people have strong expectations and the contrast of reality, thus causing absurd effects.
Thirdly, the emotional form of comedy is characterized by laughter. Laughter, as a form of aesthetic emotion, is a kind of satire and criticism, and also a kind of happiness and affirmation. In the expression of laughter, people deny ugly things and affirm beautiful things. So as to realize the affirmation of self-worth.
In the western aesthetic theory, Plato first discussed comedy, and then Kant, Hegel and Bakhtin also deeply analyzed the origin and essence of comedy.
Third, summary.
The emergence of aesthetic theories of "tragedy" and "comedy" has changed a century, especially the birth of "tragedy", which has also cultivated a number of representative tragic poets and writers, and subsequently produced a large number of far-reaching western literary works. These works of art have in turn influenced for a century. It should be said that it is necessary to study aesthetics. It is more necessary to have a profound and accurate understanding of the main events in aesthetics, "tragedy" and "comedy". Not to mention that the creation and discussion of literature and art need this kind of accomplishment, which is of great benefit to understanding the classic works of western artists, such as Shakespeare's well-known tragic works Hamlet and King Lear. Enter the situation of the work, enter the "heart" of the tragic character, understand him and analyze him, so as to gain a higher level of aesthetic experience. Isn't this a very good and valuable experience?