ABSTRACT
Narrative relief works differently than the comedic parallel or subplot. Yet nudity and sexuality in a text like Fifty Shades of Gray are not narrative relief: sex is the central focus of the main story. Slapstick comedy and gratuitous nudity both appeal to audiences’ pleasure centers but are used strategically in Shakespeare’s first tetralogy and Game of Thrones in the service of the serious narrative. This narrative relief provides alleviation from the seriousness of the main plot, allowing its tensions to reduce to a simmer, preventing an audience from checking out of a self-serious narrative that is all education and no entertainment. In Shakespeare’s first tetralogy and Game of Thrones , narrative relief is best understood not in terms of what it is, but in terms of what it is not, namely the serious, usually political, and often tragic main story told.
