We Aren't Dogs, Either

The following is an excerpt of a 30 June 2014 email exchange between Will and Art.

Will:

Comedy would be the lower art form if it weren't the higher truth. 

That the Deus ex Machinas in art tend to be cheesy doesn't have any real bearing on the majesty of Christ's intervention in the story of humanity's tragic reversal. 

Most tragedy certainly feels more compelling than most comedy because the message isn't that everything will work out just fine, and probably the first thing we need to recognize if we're going to ever find salvation is that we're not gods, which is the message of tragedy. 

After we accept that, we can accept the comic message that the resurrection teaches us: we aren't dogs, either. 

The more I look at the forms, though, the more I think my vision of the comic and epic overlap.

Art:

Odysseus and Argos

What would prevent that from being Epic, as defined by Aristotle? Unlike Tragedy, which Aristotle calls "single threaded" (goes from prosperity to adversity), Epic is "double threaded" (goes from prosperity to adversity back to prosperity). And indeed, Odysseus undergoes something very similar before he can return, following Teiresias' counsel: he threads the strait of Scylla and Charybdis, and follows several other dictates to demonstrate his humility and to propitiate Poseidon.  

When he returns to Ithaca and Telemachus sees him transformed from the old beggar to a much younger man, Telemachus exclaims, "You are a god!" And Odysseus, having been humbled by his journey, says “No god. Why take me for a god? No, no. I am that father whom your boyhood lacked." Sounds like something Arthur could say, maybe in a rare moment of clarity to one or more of his children. 

But then again, I think you may have a more Elizabethan view of comedy, which seems much more informed by Christian understandings. The idea of a lowly fool gaining superiority over the overweening ones (such as the "Lord of Misrule" figure during Christmastide) is a pagan idea that found a lot of traction within the Christian worldview for obvious reasons. Consider 1 Corinthians 25-27: 

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong… 

And this may be significant: Odysseus, to my knowledge, is the only major hero to survive the Trojan War and its aftermath. Following Hesiod's telling, Helen and the Trojan War was Zeus' plan to bring to end the age of demigods and heroes. Odysseus is the only one who transitioned over from the former to the latter age alive. 

Was his willingness to be brought low the reason he survived?