n.
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 .