searchmsearchrcsearchn Personals sc Government oa Government s Goodlookingstrippedsingers search Goodlookingstrippedsingers uu Goodlookingstrippedsingers l Government ysearchusearche Government h Goodlookingstrippedsingers Goodlookingstrippedsingers e Personals m Government &usearchtsearchc Goodlookingstrippedsingers l Government nsearcha Goodlookingstrippedsingers Goodlookingstrippedsingers esearchid Personals q Government o Government searcherssearchna Personals s Personals ts Goodlookingstrippedsingers ar Government hr G Government v Government rsearchment search Gool Goodlookingstrippedsingers oki Goodlookingstrippedsingers gsearchtsearchipedsearchingers Government rea Government c Government tssearcha Goodlookingstrippedsingers c searchesearchr Goodlookingstrippedsingers hsearch searchersna Goodlookingstrippedsingers s thsearch Personalsearch y Goodlookingstrippedsingers Perso Goodlookingstrippedsingers als as Go Government er Personals ment Government n searchoodooksearchngs Goodlookingstrippedsingers r Goodlookingstrippedsingers psearche Personals sner Government Psearchrson Goodlookingstrippedsingers ls Goodlookingstrippedsingers searchsearchm Personals Goodokin Personals srsearchppedsingesearchs Government Goosearchlosearchksearchngstrippe Personals sig Goodlookingstrippedsingers rs c Government Go Government dloo Government in Government strsearchpsearche Personals singer Goodlookingstrippedsingers nPe Government sonasc Gov Personals rnment ln Personals esearch Government esearchoresearcht Personals eAme Goodlookingstrippedsingers isearcha Personals Personals e Goodlookingstrippedsingers osearchu Government i Personals n search gin Personals t Government t Personals e Government B Government i Goodlookingstrippedsingers is Government Personals osearcha Government c Personals y Government -uul Personals y d Goodlookingstrippedsingers t Goodlookingstrippedsingers ngsearchi Government r Goodlookingstrippedsingers m Government 1 Goodlookingstrippedsingers 0search (searchh Goodlookingstrippedsingers nsearch Government Personals Jamesearcht Government w Personals as Goodlookingstrippedsingers fosearchn Personals e Goodlookingstrippedsingers ) Personals o Personals 1 Personals 8 (hnsearchCog Government es Goodlookingstrippedsingers searchasearchii Government d Government tsearche Goodlookingstrippedsingers F Government dsearchra Personals C Government nsearchtitution). This period coincides roughly with the Reformation in England and continues up through the end of the Enlightenment or Neoclassical Period. American writers from the colonial period include Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Anne Bradstreet. See also Neoclassic. Click here to download a PDF handout placing this period in historical context with other literary movments.

When British historians use the term, they sometimes tend to apply the word "colonial" in more general reference to the British expansions into the Americas, the Indies, India, Africa, and the Middle-East over the course of several centuries, even up to the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. See colonialism, below.

COLONIALISM: The term refers broadly and generally to the habit of powerful civilizations to "colonize" less powerful ones. On the obvious level, this process can take the form of a literal geographic occupation, outright enslavement, religious conversion at gun-point, or forced assimilation of native peoples. On a more subtle level, this process can take the form of bureucratic policy that incidentally or indirectly leads to the extinction of a minority's language or culture, economic exploitation of cheap labor, and globalistic erasure of cultural differences. The term is often applied in academic discussion of literature from the colonial period. We can see the concerns of colonialism and imperial ambition in the works of George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant," in Rudyard Kipling's fictional tales about India, and in Josef Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness. See Colonial Period, above.

COMEDY (from Greek: komos, "songs of merrimakers"): In the original meaning of the word, comedy referred to a genre of drama during the Dionysia festivals of ancient Athens. The first comedies were loud and boisterous drunken affairs, as the word's etymology suggests. Later, in medieval and Renaissance use, the word comedy came to mean any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending. The comedy did not necessarily have to be funny, and indeed, many comedies are serious in tone. It is only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that comedy's exclusive connotations of humor arose. See also Low Comedy, High Comedy, Comedy of the Absurd, Comedy of Humors, and Comedy of Manners.

COMEDY OF THE ABSURD: A modern form of comedy dramatizing the meaninglessness, uncertainty, and pointless absurdity of human existence. A famous example is Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Cf. existentialism.

COMEDY OF HUMORS: A Renaissance drama in which numerous characters appear as the embodiment of stereotypical "types" of people, each character having the physiological and behavioral traits associated with a specific humor in the human body. The majority of the cast consists of such stock characters. (See "humors, bodily" for more information.) Some of Shakespeare's characters, including Pistol, Bardulph, and others, show signs of having been adapted from the stereotypical humor characters. In literature, a humor character was a type of flat character in whom a single passion predominated; this interpretation was especially popular in Elizabethan and other Renaissance literature. See also stock character.

COMEDY OF INNOCENCE: We have two definitions here. (1) In anthropological terms, a comedy of innocence is a ritualized symbolic behavior (or set of such behaviors) designed to alleviate individual or communal guilt about an execution or sacrifice or to hide the blame for such an action. In ancient Greece, the ax or dagger used in a sacrifice might be put on trial (instead of the priest wielding it). The sacrificial animal might be required to "volunteer" by shaking its head or by walking up to the altar to eat the grain sitting on it. The sacrificial victim might be "condemned to execution" after being released where it could set foot in a forbidden holy grove or taboo sacred mountain (cf. Exodus 19:12-13 and Judges 11:30-40). In America, we see remnants of the comedy of innocence in customs such as the 19th-century's hangman's black mask (to erase the executioner's identity) or the custom of granting the condemned prisoner's last request or final meal (to alleviate any sense of cruelty on the jailer's part).

(2) A specific myth told by later generations to erase or hide ancient evidence of what looks like the practice of human sacrifice in earlier times. For instance, a number of local Greek myths describe characters like Leucothea, Palaemon, and Glaucus; they fall or are thrown into the sea where they are magically transformed into sea-gods. Given the relative insignificance of these gods in the Greek pantheon, it is likely this sort of tale either (a) developed out of local hero cults or (b) the tale alludes to an ancient or prehistoric belief that drowned sacrificial victims would live on as animistic spirits. Another common version of the comedy of innocence is the motif of a human sacrificial victim (usually a child) who is miraculously saved (deus ex machina) and an animal substituted in his or her place. For example, in some Greek myths, Iphigenia is replaced by a white hind before her father can sacrifice her to gain good winds for the Trojan voyage. Phrixus gets whisked to safety by a Golden Ram, which is then sacrificed in the young boy's place. In the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh stops Abraham from killing Isaac, and he directs Abraham's attention to a ram with its horns caught in a thicket (Genesis 22:9-13). Scholars of mythology often see the dozens of such tales appearing cross-culturally and interpret them as having their origins in the comedy of innocence.

COMEDY OF MANNERS: A comic drama consisting of five or three acts in which the attitudes and customs of a society are critiqued and satirized according to high standards of intellect and morality. The dialogue is usually clever and sophisticated, but often risqué. Characters are valued according to their linguistic and intellectual prowess. It is the opposite of the slapstick humor found in a farce or in a fabliau.

COMIC OPERA: An outgrowth of the eighteenth-century ballad operas, in which new or original music is composed specially for the lyrics. (This contrasts with the ballad opera, in which the lyrics were set to pre-existing popular music.)

COMIC RELIEF: A humorous scene, incident, Copyright Dr. L. Kip Wheeler 1998-2012. Permission is granted for non-profit, educational, and student reproduction. Last updated March 30, 2012. Contact: kwheeler@cn.edu Please e-mail corrections, suggestions, or comments to help me improve this site. Click here for credits, thanks, and additional copyright information. gv z Good Looking Stripped Singers Good Looking Stripped Singers ts c Good Looking Stripped Singers