9781107284265 (electronic bk.)

1107284260 (electronic bk.)

9781107053922

1107053927

9781107635517

1107635519

Electronic reproduction. Cambridge Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

Cambridge Introductions to Literature

ch.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

ch. 2. Setting the stage

Alfred Jarry

Franz Kafka

OBERIU

Antonin Artaud

ch.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"

ch.4. Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Other plays

Fiction

Poetry

ch.5. Beckett's notable contemporaries

Edward Albee

Jean Genet

Eugene Ionesco

Harold Pinter

ch.6. The European and American wave of absurdism

Arthur Adamov

Fernando Arrabal

Amiri Baraka

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Jack Gelber

Václav Havel

Adrienne Kennedy

Arthur Kopit

Slawomir Mrożek

Tadeusz Różewicz

Sam Shepard

N.F. Simpson

Tom Stoppard

ch.7. Post-absurdism?

The influence of the absurdist "movement"

Dramatic and theatrical conventions following the absurdist "movement"

(Later) female absurdists

The multicultural absurd?

Absurdism's legacy outside the theatre: fiction and poetry after the wake of the 1970s

Absurdism in pop culture

ch.8. Absurd criticism - Esslin

Esslin's contemporaries

The lull in absurd criticism

The resurgence of absurd criticism in the new millennium.

Drama > 20th century > History and criticism.