I have come across this quote from Northrop Frye's book Anatomy of Criticism:
the social judgment against the absurd is closer to the comic norm than the moral judgment against the wicked.
What is meant by it? Can anyone explain it to a non-expert?
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1Welcome to Literature Stack Exchange. Could you please add the exact source of the quote (N. Frye's Anatomy of Criticism?)? And where you found the quote? Without a bit more context, is is difficult to help. – Tsundoku♦ Jun 19 '18 at 18:32
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Northrop Frye distinguished five types of comedy. Is this question about all of them? – Tsundoku♦ Jun 20 '18 at 15:23
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He discusses this in his section on the "Mythos of Spring", where he portrays the archetypal comedy story as a young man and a young woman (both fairly colorless) want to marry but are obstructed by older and richer characters who must to be stopped -- for instance, the hero's father wants to marry her himself, though she's (obviously) young enough to be his daughter.
His claim is that comedy treats this father's flaws with not so much as moral condemnation -- how horrible that he has the power to play the tyrant! -- as ridicule -- he doesn't even realize how foolish it is for such an old bag of bones to woo a young beauty!
