Touching comedy
The touching comedy or touching comedy (translation of the French comédie larmoyante ) is a theatrical genre of the 18th century, which is very similar to the bourgeois tragedy followed, but emanates generally happy. Both genres criticize the ständeklausel , stating that in the tragedy only people of courtly status should occur or a comedy could not have a serious act. The presentation of serious topics must be reserved for noble individual fates, since the lower classes lack the " height of fall ".
While the bourgeois tragedy complements the tragedy with main characters from the bourgeoisie and thus ignores the class clause, the “touching comedy” puts its non-noble staff in serious situations. It represents a hybrid form in which the generally comedy-like plot is enriched by serious elements. The emotion arises through the experience of general human values that are not tied to social classes such as parental love and filial love (cf. sensitivity ).
An exemplary touching comedy is The Tender Sisters by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert . In his treatise Pro comoedia commovente (1751) Gellert explains that there are “virtues” in “private life” that are not to be laughed at, even if they are only used for the bourgeois “ Righteousness ”belonged and not to the“ greatness ”of the nobleman to whom tragedy is reserved. Therefore, the “good” in the comedy should outweigh the “grimacing”.
The expression touching comedy was mainly used in the 18th century for moralistic plays in which the emotion is not an end in itself. The term for the genre that has established itself in theater practice due to its audience success is stirring piece . Often touching pieces no longer have any comedic elements, but are merely comedies due to the social composition of their characters and their audience in the terminology of the 18th century .