PhD dissertation -Summary. The birth of comedy: Chaplin and the ontology of comic aesthetics

This article presents a synthesis of the goals, methods, and conclusions of the PhD dissertation of its author, who studies the films by Charles Chaplin. Using a methodology based on myth-criticism and deriving into a direct analysis of images, the origins of comedy are studied through the character of Charlot, structuring his universe into three major epiphanies, which represent three large features of the comic genre: mocking Charlot, pathetic Charlot and Monsieur Verdoux. One of the main contributions of this project is to show how the myth of Hermes founds comedy in Western culture, how Chaplin’s cinema becomes his most significant epiphany, and how Chaplin goes against the Aristotelian standard elevating comedy to a sublime status.