Department of English Language organized a symposium about (The Comic Spirit in Literature), at the Oral Examination Hall, on November 16. Comedy is a genre in literature that embodies humorous texts which principally aim to amuse. The concept of comedy began as back as 4 BCE in ancient Greece, where Aristotle, in his Poetics, conceives it as mainly about correcting human beings and society. In Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, the French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson argues that the comic is a human phenomenon that provides a better understanding of society, reveals man’s creative imagination, and contains a moral lesson. Our symposium on comic literature, however, includes humorous prose, drama, and poetry. Accordingly, the symposium cordially welcomes papers about comic literary works that aim to be satirical, to teach, or just to create laughter. The objectives of the symposium are:
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addressing a genre that has not been sufficiently examined in our department;
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highlighting the unconventional literary comic texts;
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detecting the development of comic structures in literature;
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and providing insight into human nature.
