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.

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.

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.

Michael Y. Bennett's accessible Introduction explains the complex, multidimensional nature of the works and writers associated with the absurd - a label placed upon a number of writers who revolted against traditional theatre and literature in both similar and widely different ways. Setting the movement in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, Bennett provides an in-depth overview of absurdism and its key figures in theatre and literature, from Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to Tom Stoppard. Chapters reveal the movement's origins, development and present-day influence upon popular culture around the world, employing the latest research to this often challenging area of study in a balanced and authoritative approach. Essential reading for students of literature and theatre, this book provides the necessary tools to interpret and develop the study of a movement associated with some of the twentieth century's greatest and most influential cultural figures.

This book explores the connection between politics and theatre by looking at the works and lives of Shaw, Brecht, Sartre, and Ionesco, providing a cultural history detailing the changing role of political theatre in twentieth-century Europe.

The Book Is Based On The Uniform Pattern Of Syllabus For M.A. In English For Indian Universities Prescribed By The Ugc. It Is Comprehensive And Covers The Entire History Of British Literature. It Also Includes Exhaustive Material On American Literature, Commonwealth Literature And Indian Writing In English. There Is A Useful Section On Classics Of World Literature Too.It Will Cater To The Need Of Postgraduate Students And Scholars, As Well As Anyone Preparing For Competitive Examinations Like Net, Jrf, Slet And Pre-Ph.D. Registration Test. The Book Presents Multiple Choice Questions And Answers And Is Indispensable For Any Examination One May Choose To Prepare For.

American playwrights have made enormous contributions to world drama during the last century, and their works are widely read and performed. This reference conveniently introduces 10 of the most important modern American plays read by students. An introductory essay concisely overviews modern American drama, and each of the chapters that follow examines a particular play. Among the plays discussed are Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, and August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. Each chapter includes a biography, a plot summary, an analysis of the play's themes, characters, and dramatic art, and a review of its historical background and reception. Chapters list works for further reading, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.