comedy, Genre of dramatic literature that deals with the light and amusing or with the serious and profound in a light, familiar, or satirical manner. Comedy can be traced to revels associated with worship in Greece in the 5th century bc. Aristophanes, Menander, Terence, and Plautus produced comedies in classical literature. It reappeared in the late Middle Ages, when the term was used to mean simply a story with a happy ending (e.g., Dante’s Divine Comedy), the same meaning it has in novels of the last three centuries (e.g., the fiction of Jane Austen). Compare tragedy.
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