Affirmative, acceptant, joyful fiction: Where art thou?

WS posts a comment clarifying his request for suggestions on a certain type of book, not just upbeat or positive or "feel good" or integration (or re-intergration) into society (see my post from two days ago, Seeking Upbeat Books, December 9, 2012) but, in his words: "More affirmative in basic attitude throughout—loving, acceptant, joyful, enjoying in spite of pain, suffering, disappointment, conflict, and all that. No naiveté. This is Shakespeare in the comedies—often willfully affirmative. The Tempest too: knowingly create a benign fiction to promote happiness. But most of all Chaucer, loving both pedantic clerks and bawdy wives." Wow, a tall order - for a couple of reasons. First, I've written a lot about Shakespeare's comedies (many years ago, not the comedies but my writing) and as anyone who's read what I've written knows I see a lot of dark elements in even the "sunniest" of the comedies that most if not all other critics have ignored; similarly, I also have written about Chaucer, and found a lot of dark elements there, too - especially the anti-Semitism. That said, I do understand the more widely accepted views of both S and Chaucer - and I know what WS (not William Shakespeare) is getting at: there is a sense in both but especially in Chaucer that by presenting a wide selection of characters he is presenting a vision of the whole of his world, the whole of his society. It's an illusion in the case of both writers, but an effective ploy, and without question both are capacious and inclusive writers, in ways that pretty much no one else has been able to emulate. I think some of my examples from the post two days ago, however, still stand, especially Cervantes (and for a modern example Zadie Smith's White Teeth) and in a weird way Stephen King's It. Beyond that the selections are more difficult to suggest - WS mentions Rabelais, whom I had thought of, too, but I've only read a tiny bit of him years ago in French class so I can't really claim knowledge there. I think part of what WS is seeking comes from the "maximalist" novels - as discussed in an essay in the current NYTBR, by chance. The greatest of all is no doubt Ulysses: just as Ch. creates the illusion of a whole world by depicting a gallery or portraits, Joyce creates the illusion of a whole world by capturing every aspect of one city in one day (and all of world literature, as well). The other monumental books of the Modern era would be far too dark, and limited in class, to mean the WS criteria: thinking of Magic Mountain, Man Without Qualities, Search of Lost Time, and for good measure Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow. Which leads me to conclude that the writers with the capacity and the will to cover a vast scope of the world, in either one great novel of a series of novels (e.g., Faulkner) do not as rule create a "benign fiction to promote happiness." Perhaps writing is too isolating an art form, and so the great writers are removed from the world, in their cork-lined rooms real of metaphorical, rather than engaged in the world in a life-affirming way? Dramatists, court poets, and let's add filmmakers, have to work in consort with others to create their art, which may lead to a very different world view. For examples outside of literature - affirmative in basic attitude and wide in scope - I would look perhaps to great movies: Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game coming to mind first and foremost.