"The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature is the first authoritative and definitive edited collection on absurdist literature. As a field-defining volume, the editor and the contributors are world leaders in this ever-exciting genre that includes some of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century: including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Albert Camus. Ever puzzling and always refusing to be pinned down, this book does not attempt todefine absurdist literature, but attempts to examine its major and minor players. As such, the field is indirectly defined by examining its constituent writers. Not only investigating the so-called "Theatre of the Absurd," this volume wades quite deeply into absurdist fiction and absurdist poetry, expanding much of our previous sense of what constitutes absurdist literature. Furthermore, long overdue, approximately one-third of the book is devoted to marginalized writers: black, Latin/x, female, LGBTQ+, and non-Western voices"--
The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature is the first authoritative and definitive edited collection on absurdist literature. As a field-defining volume, the editor and the contributors are world leaders in this ever-exciting genre that includes some of the most important and influential writers of the twentieth century, including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Albert Camus. Ever puzzling and always refusing to be pinned down, this book does not attempt to define absurdist literature, but attempts to examine its major and minor players. As such, the field is indirectly defined by examining its constituent writers. Not only investigating the so-called Theatre of the Absurd, this volume wades deeply into absurdist fiction and absurdist poetry, expanding much of our previous sense of what constitutes absurdist literature. Furthermore, long overdue, approximately one-third of the book is devoted to marginalized writers: black, Latin/x, female, LGBTQ+, and non-Western voices.
The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature is a field-defining collection. The editor and contributors are not only investigating the so-called Theatre of the Absurd, but wading deeply into absurdist fiction, absurdist poetry, and black, Latin/x, female, LGBTQ+, and non-Western Absurdist voices.
Introduction: What Is Absurdist Literature? And Is that What We Are
Calling It Now?; PART I Origins; SECTION 1 What Led to Absurdist Literature?;
1 Historical Precursors, I: Ancient Tragicomedy and Pastoral Plays; 2
Historical Precursors, II: Nonsense! From Carroll and Lear through Wilde and
Sitwell to the Postmodern; 3 Historical Precursors, III: Gogol and
Dostoevsky; 4 Bartleby and Beckett; 5 Kafka as Literature of the Absurd; 6
OBERIU: The Absurd as a Critique of Poetic Reason; 7 The Absurd: Dada and
Surrealism; 8 T. S. Eliot and the Group Theatre; SECTION 2 Philosophical
Origins: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus; 9 Nietzsches Absurd
Tragedy; 10 Kierkegaard and the Absurd; 11 Sartre and the Absurd; 12 Camus
and Absurdity; PART II Absurdist Literature; SECTION 3 Samuel Beckett; 13
Show not Tell: The "Absurdist" Theatre of Samuel Becket; 14 Becketts
Fiction; 15 Credo quia absurdum est: The Subversion of the Rational in Samuel
Becketts Early Poetics; 16 Samuel Becketts Television Plays; 17 Samuel
Becketts Radio Plays; SECTION 4 1950s: The First Wave; 18 Arthur Adamov; 19
Jean Genet; 20 Eugčne Ionesco; 21 Harold Pinter and the Theatre of the
Absurd; SECTION 5 1960s: The Emergence of a So-Called "Movement" Absurdist
Literature in English; 22 Edward Albee, Absurdist; 23 Amiri Baraka; 24 Jack
Gelber; 25 Arthur Kopit; 26 He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box: Adrienne
Kennedys Absurdist Dreamwrighting; 27 Tom Stoppard and the Absurd; 28
Guerrilla Theatre as Absurd Performance; 29 Understanding the Absurd under
the Shadow of Late Capitalism: Philip K. Dick, Thomas Pynchon, and Kurt
Vonnegut; 30 Arrabals Panic Allowances for the Absurd; 31 Friedrich
Dürrenmatt; 32 St. Sisyphus: Günter Grasss Absurdist Social Democracy; 33
(Re)Considering Sawomir Mroek; PART III Absurdist Legacies; SECTION 6
Feminist, LGBTQ+, and Multiethnic Absurdist Literature; 34 Amusing and
Shocking: Caryl Churchills Absurdist Drama; 35 Split Britches and the Camp
Absurd; 36 "Beckett Just Seems So Black to Me": SuzanLori Parks as Absurdist
Playwright; 37 (Multi)Ethnic Absurdist Theater; SECTION 7 World Absurdist
Literature; 38 Luminaries of the Aesthetics of the Absurd in Latin America;
39 Response and Resistance: A Birdseye View of the Absurd in the
Spanishspeaking Caribbean; 40 Middle Eastern Absurdist Literature; 41 Indian
Theatres of the Absurd: Cultural Politics of Transformation; 42 Postcolonial
Absurdist Literature; 43 Decolonisation and the Theatre of the Absurd; 44
Absurdist Cinema, Television, and Adaptations around the World
Michael Y. Bennett is an Associate Professor of English and Affiliated Faculty in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA. In addition to being a past Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK, where he was a Visiting Fellow. In addition to being on the Advisory Boards of Comparative Drama and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, he is the President of The Edward Albee Society, the Editor of the book series, Routledge Studies on Edward Albee and American Theatre, and is the Editor of the journal, Theatre and Performance Notes and Counternotes. A theatre theorist and critic known for his work on absurd drama, philosophy of theatre, Edward Albee, and Oscar Wilde, he is the author or editor of fifteen books.
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