What was comedic about the Divine Comedy?

As I have said before, one of the ways a stroll is fulfilling, is due to the people you meet along the way. I bumped across @aakriti_j8 , she curates some amazing content at @wordigraphy and is an etymology enthusiast like me. As conversations go, we got to talking about comedy and errors. No, not of the Victorian variety, but that of the being exiled out of Florence and ending up writing the most horrific account of hell and calling it a Comedy kind.
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Dante’s Divine Comedy for starters, is a paragon of what AJ Cronin calls deceptive appearances. The only hilarious thing about his Inferno is how he created the entire thing out of pettiness and, for he was betrayed, decided that the most gruesome punishments (of being nibbled on by a three-headed Satan) was reserved for the poster-boy of treachery – Judas. This is what Aakriti on why it is called a “Comedy”. ⁣
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“So, whosoever said “Tragedy + Time = Comedy”, was not that wrong. Both the words, “tragedy” and “comedy” are derived from the Greek word ‘ode’ meaning ‘song’ or ‘to sing’ (the same “ode” we see in “rhapsody” which literally means “wrapping, or weaving” a song). Other words it spawns are parody, melody and ⁣
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Domenico di Michelino's Dante Illuminating Florence With His Poem.

 

At one point, the word ‘comedy’ even meant a poem’ in Old French. Somewhere around the late 14th century, comedy started to be defined as narrative with a happy ending. Since Dante started with Inferno and ended in Paradise, and had successfully threw shade at everyone who annoyed him, Aristotle, Socrates, Brutus, the works. It was a happy ending. Thus, Comedy. ⁣
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The word “tragedy” on the other hand, is a story that ends unhappily. In literal terms, it means “a goat song” (from Greek “tragos”, meaning goat or buck). Said so because it’s traced to the song performed before rituals, where goats were sacrificed, or to competitions where the "singers competed for a goat as a prize". You’re free to choose what’s sadder.”