Download or read book The Theatre of the Absurd written by Martin Esslin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-04-02 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understand one another. In 1961, Martin Esslin gave a name to the phenomenon in his groundbreaking study of these playwrights who dramatized the absurdity at the core of the human condition. Over four decades after its initial publication, Esslin’s landmark book has lost none of its freshness. The questions these dramatists raise about the struggle for meaning in a purposeless world are still as incisive and necessary today as they were when Beckett’s tramps first waited beneath a dying tree on a lonely country road for a mysterious benefactor who would never show. Authoritative, engaging, and eminently readable, The Theatre of the Absurd is nothing short of a classic: vital reading for anyone with an interest in the theatre.
Download or read book Modern Literature and the Tragic written by K. M. Newton and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores modern literature's responses to the tragic. It examines writers from the latter half of the nineteenth century through to the later twentieth century who respond to ideas about tragedy. Although Ibsen has been accused of being responsible for the 'death of tragedy', Ken Newton argues that Ibsen instead generates an anti-tragic perspective that had a major influence on dramatists such as Shaw and Brecht. By contrast, writers such as Hardy and Conrad, influenced by Schopenhauerean pessimism and Darwinism, attempt to modernise the concept of the tragic. Nietzsche's revisionist interpretation of the tragic influenced writers who either take pessimism or the 'Dionysian' commitment to life to an extreme, as in Strindberg and D. H. Lawrence. Different views emerge in the period following the second world war with the 'Theatre of the Absurd' and postmodern anti-foundationalism.
Download or read book The Absurd written by Arnold P. Hinchliffe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1969, provides a helpful introduction to the study of Absurdist writing and drama in the first half of the twentieth century. After discussing a variety of definitions of the Absurd, it goes on to examine a number of key figures in the movement such as Esslin, Sartre, Camus, Ionesco and Genet. The book concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the term ‘Absurd’ and possible objections to Absurdity. This book will be of interest to those studying Absurdist literature as well as twentieth century drama, literature and philosophy.
Download or read book Three Plays of the Absurd written by Walter Wykes and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2006 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of plays, Walter Wykes creates a series of modern myths, tapping into something in the strata of the subconscious, through ritualism and rich, poetic language. The worlds he creates are brand new and hilarious, yet each contains an ancient horror we all know and cannot escape and have never been able to hang one definitive word on. The Profession follows the experiences of a naive young man exposed to the inner workings of a secret society of assassins. In Fading Joy a young woman finds herself caught up in the intoxicating world of a smooth-talking salesman. When he flees to escape a mysterious group known only as The Tall Men, she finds it impossible to go back to her old way of life. Finally, The Father Clock tells the apocalyptic tale of two actors and a stage manager abandoned by their aging director. As the auditorium begins to fill and the lights dim, they desperately attempt to pull the show together even as a strange illness drifts through the theatre.
Download or read book Re Thinking Character in the Theatre of the Absurd written by Carmen Dominte and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the character as a central element, this volume provides insights into the Theatre of the Absurd, highlighting its specific key characteristics. Adopting both semiotic-structuralist and mathematical approaches, its analysis of the absurdist character introduces new models of investigation, including a possible algebraic model operating on the scenic, dramatic and paradigmatic level of a play, not only exploring the relations, configurations, confrontations, functions and situations but also providing necessary information for a possible geometric model. The book also takes into consideration the relations established among the most important units of a dramatic work, character, cue, décor and régie, re-configuring the basic pattern. It will be useful for any reader interested in analyzing, staging or writing a play starting from a single character.
Download or read book An Approach to Absurd Theatre in the Twentieth Century written by Pradip Lahiri and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-07 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present study contributes to the corpus of later 20th-century drama and theatre, examining how absurdist theatre works to show the playwrights’ deep insights into humanity’s angst through a confrontation of the deeply subconscious self and the manifest socio-moral façade around us. The book, as a consolidated study, will allow students to form a comprehensive understanding of 20th-century experimental theatre, replete with theories and discernible techniques from as early as the 1950s. It highlights the decisive turn taken by Western playwrights and the dramatic revolution that took place around the mid-20th century through the plays of Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Genet, Adamov, Albee, and others. The book strives to familiarize the learners systematically through scaling, surveying and scanning the multifarious literary movements and metamorphoses that created this theatrical scenario.
Download or read book Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd written by Carl Lavery and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd is an innovative collection of essays, written by leading scholars in the fields of theatre, performance and eco-criticism, which reconfigures absurdist theatre through the optics of ecology and environment. As well as offering strikingly new interpretations of the work of canonical playwrights such as Beckett, Genet, Ionesco, Adamov, Albee, Kafka, Pinter, Shepard and Churchill, the book playfully mimics the structure of Martin Esslin's classic text The Theatre of the Absurd, which is commonly recognised as one of the most important scholarly publications of the 20th century. By reading absurdist drama, for the first time, as an emergent form of ecological theatre, Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd interrogates afresh the very meaning of absurdism for 21st-century audiences, while at the same time making a significant contribution to the development of theatre and performance studies as a whole. The collection's interdisciplinary approach, accessibility, and ecological focus will appeal to students and academics in a number of different fields, including theatre, performance, English, French, geography and philosophy. It will also have a major impact on the new cross disciplinary paradigm of eco-criticism.
Download or read book Absurd Drama written by and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre and Literature of the Absurd written by Michael Y. Bennett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-26 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible Introduction provides an in-depth overview of absurdism and its key figures in theatre and literature, from Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to Tom Stoppard. Essential reading for students, this book provides the necessary tools to develop the study of some of the twentieth century's most influential works.
Download or read book Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd written by M. Bennett and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-04-25 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years after the publication of Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd , which suggests that 'absurd' plays purport the meaninglessness of life, this book uses the works of five major playwrights of the 1950s to provide a timely reassessment of one of the most important theatre 'movements' of the 20th century.
Download or read book Absurd Drama 1945 1965 written by Ram Sewak Singh and published by Delhi : Hariyana Prakashan. This book was released on 1973 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Absurd Drama written by Martin Esslin and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of plays, often classified as absurd drama, which aim to portray a world in which humanity, with its despair, fear and loneliness, is alone in a hostile and meaningless world.
Download or read book The absurd in literature written by Neil Cornwell and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neil Cornwell's study, while endeavouring to present an historical survey of absurdist literature and its forbears, does not aspire to being an exhaustive history of absurdism. Rather, it pauses on certain historical moments, artistic movements, literary figures and selected works, before moving on to discuss four key writers: Daniil Kharms, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien. The absurd in literature will be of compelling interest to a considerable range of students of comparative, European (including Russian and Central European) and English literatures (British Isles and American) – as well as those more concerned with theatre studies, the avant-garde and the history of ideas (including humour theory). It should also have a wide appeal to the enthusiastic general reader.
Download or read book Equivocation in the Theatre of the Absurd written by Haidar Kareem Al-Aabedi and published by Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH. This book was released on 2015-07-06 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first attempt made to analyse the equivocal language of the Absurd Theatre via pure linguistic models carefully employed and illustrated by a wide range of significant examples, questions, and discussions. It provides the multiple tools necessary for understanding this language from various perspectives. Dr. Haidar K. Al-Abedi was Lecturer in English at University of Baghdad, Al-Muthana University, and Al-Israa University College. ``Haidar has to be complimented at the outset for selecting a very interesting topic . . . It is not surprising that a person from Iraq – and the ravages the country is sadly facing these days – is interested in an area which has its significant socio-cultural origin in the ravages of the World War II. The scope of the research also effectively covers the entire school of the British exponents of the Absurd Theatre. In fact, the first chapter discusses the central keyword – equivocation – in scholarly detail. There is an interesting discussion about the various types of equivocation from chapter two to five quite elaborately conducted by the researcher.'' Dr. Sanjay Mukherjee, Saurashtra University, India ``This book is an elaborate analysis of a number of plays written by different dramatists. By elucidating the equivocal verbal and non-verbal communication used by characters, the book addresses a wide range of social, religious, cultural, and political themes and issues which appeal to its audience/readers and are involved in constructing meaning through its peculiar use of language.'' Dr. Adel Saleh, Wasit University, Iraq
Download or read book The Absurd written by Arnold P. Hinchliffe and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1969, provides a helpful introduction to the study of Absurdist writing and drama in the first half of the twentieth century. After discussing a variety of definitions of the Absurd, it goes on to examine a number of key figures in the movement such as Esslin, Sartre, Camus, Ionesco and Genet. The book concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the term ‘Absurd’ and possible objections to Absurdity. This book will be of interest to those studying Absurdist literature as well as twentieth century drama, literature and philosophy.
Download or read book Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater written by William B. Worthen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of drama is typically viewed as a series of inert "styles." Tracing British and American stage drama from the 1880s onward, W. B. Worthen instead sees drama as the interplay of text, stage production, and audience. How are audiences manipulated? What makes drama meaningful? Worthen identifies three rhetorical strategies that distinguish an O'Neill play from a Yeats, or these two from a Brecht. Where realistic theater relies on the "natural" qualities of the stage scene, poetic theater uses the poet's word, the text, to control performance. Modern political theater, by contrast, openly places the audience at the center of its rhetorical designs, and the drama of the postwar period is shown to develop a range of post-Brechtian practices that make the audience the subject of the play. Worthen's book deserves the attention of any literary critic or serious theatergoer interested in the relationship between modern drama and the spectator. The history of drama is typically viewed as a series of inert "styles." Tracing British and American stage drama from the 1880s onward, W. B. Worthen instead sees drama as the interplay of text, stage production, and audience. How are audiences manipulated? What makes drama meaningful? Worthen identifies three rhetorical strategies that distinguish an O'Neill play from a Yeats, or these two from a Brecht. Where realistic theater relies on the "natural" qualities of the stage scene, poetic theater uses the poet's word, the text, to control performance. Modern political theater, by contrast, openly places the audience at the center of its rhetorical designs, and the drama of the postwar period is shown to develop a range of post-Brechtian practices that make the audience the subject of the play. Worthen's book deserves the attention of any literary critic or serious theatergoer interested in the relationship between modern drama and the spectator.
Download or read book Reading the Absurd written by Joanna Gavins and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the literary absurd? What are its key textual features? How can it be analysed? How do different readers respond to absurdist literature?Taking the theories and methodologies of stylistics as its underlying analytical framework, Reading the Absurd tackles each of these questions. Selected key works in English literature are examined in depth to reveal significant aspects of absurd style. Its analytical approach combines stylistic inquiry with a cognitive perspective on language, literature and reading which sheds new light on the human experience of literary reading.By exploring the literary absurd as a linguistic and experiential phenomena, while at the same time reflecting upon its essential historical and cultural situation, Joanna Gavins brings a new perspective to the absurd aesthetic.
