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You seem to be correct about Dante’s use of comedy. But Arabic works dealing with comedy were very important.
Aristotles’s Poetics was translated into Arabic in medieval times, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and philosophers, such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes.
They applied Aristotle’s dictums to Arabic poetic themes and defined comedy as simply the “art of reprehension”, and made no reference to light and cheerful events or happy endings. Comedy was translated as hija (satirical poetry). Many early European critics followed this and defined comedy as only satire. Admittedly Dante seems not to have done so, following some other tradition.
My understanding is that it was these Arabic writings that were one of the main foundations of western critical theory. But these Arabic writings were indeed not responsible for comedy meaning any “low” poem.
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