The Legitimate but Unchristened Genre of Tragisatire

Traditional literary theory has always contrasted tragedy and comedy, describing them formally as separate genres. However, in English literature since the Renaissance, they often do coincide, resulting in the distinctive genre here called "tragisatire." Modern scientific and esthetic perspectives are compatible with a significant historical analogue on this generic point, that is, with Christian humanism, at once an essentially religious response and a natural literary expression. Tragisatire is a coalescing genre precisely at the time that a subtly syncretic humanism supplants some of the less flexible demarcations made by traditional Christianity; it can be understood not only formally for what it appears to be, but historically for what it has seemed to do. It continues to have purgative and purgatorial effects long held by many to be peculiar to tragedy and religion. The genre is identifiable with its religious themes, just as tragedy and comedy always have been, rather than according to rhetorical forms, as is customary with satire. Those themes have roots in experiences which combine high seriousness with ordinary levity, and which are not and never have been discrete.