Weighing Delight and Dole (American University Studies. Series III, Comparative Literature, Vol 26)

This work establishes a concept of anxiety reduction which is applied to a discussion of the literature on comedy and tragedy in order to propose new definitions of these genres. The results of this theoretical treatment are then employed in analyses of works of Shakespeare, Schiller, Büchner, Lessing, Cary, De Vries and Kafka.