Retórica do riso : comédia, sátira e um dia na feira com Ben Johson

Abstract

Using as a point of departure a brief consideration of the characteristically unstable relationships between such codes as comedy and satire within genre theory, this essay goes on to apply those criticai concerns to a reading of the work of the Renaissance dramatist Ben Jonson, with particular reference to his comedy Bartholomew Fair. It is argued that this text fully confirms a tendency, already discernible in some of his previous comedíes, for Jonson's certaintíes as a satirist to be drastically questioned. Contributions from social history and anthropology are brought in to help account for the replacement of satiric inculpation by an exculpatory perspective deeply rooted in the understanding and in the dramatic/theatrical practice of comedy.