[Cambridge Introductions to Literature 01] • Theatre and Literature of the Absurd by Bennett, Michael Y. -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Half title Title page Imprints page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Introduction: Overview of the absurd

Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd Common conceptions of the absurd Origins of the absurd: The Greeks through the nineteenth century Origins of the absurd: Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and other avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century Philosophy of the absurd: Or rather, philosophies of the absurd Challenges to the notion of “absurd” Absurd tragicomedy

Four short notes about this book

Chapter 2 Setting the stage

Alfred Jarry Franz Kafka OBERIU Antonin Artaud

Chapter 3 The emergence of a “movement”: The historical and intellectual contexts

Post-WWII Europe Post-WWII United States The Existential Front The Camus–Sartre quarrel The emergence of analytic philosophy Why theatre?: How the genre came to be the center of the “movement”

Chapter 4 Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot Other plays

Experimentation with language (generally, working against “realistic” language) Tragicomedy is the genre Frequently, though not always, experimentation with non-Aristotelian plot lines (where, often, the plots take the structure of a parable) Setting the literary work in “strange” (i.e., Kafkaesque, surreal, and ridiculous) situations

Fiction

Poetry

Chapter 5 Beckett's notable contemporaries

Edward Albee Jean Genet Eugene Ionesco Harold Pinter

Chapter 6 The European and American wave of absurdism

Arthur Adamov Fernando Arrabal Amiri Baraka Friedrich Dürrenmatt Jack Gelber Václav Havel Adrienne Kennedy Arthur Kopit Sławomir Mrożek Tadeusz Różewicz Sam Shepard N.F. Simpson Tom Stoppard

Chapter 7 Post-absurdism?

The influence of the absurdist “movement” Dramatic and theatrical conventions following the absurdist “movement” (Later) female absurdists

Beth Henley Maria Irene Fornes Caryl Churchill

The multicultural absurd? Absurdism's legacy outside of the theatre: Fiction and poetry after the wake of the 1970s Absurdism in pop culture

Sesame Street's Monsterpiece Theater, “Waiting for Elmo” Seinfeld's “The Chinese Restaurant” Waiting for Guffman Curb Your Enthusiasm

Chapter 8 Absurd criticism

Esslin Esslin's contemporaries The lull in absurd criticism The resurgence of absurd criticism in the new millennium

Notes Further reading Index Cambridge Introductions to…

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