M. Bennett 
Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd 
Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter

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.

Table des matières

Introduction: Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd ‘The Parable of Estagon’s Struggle with the Boot’ in Waiting for Godot The Pinteresque Oedipal Household: The Interrogation Scene(s) in The Birthday Party The Parable of the White Clown: The Use of Ritual in Jean Genet’s The Blacks: A Clown Show Berenger, The Sisyphean Hero Conclusion: Theorizing a ‘Female Absurd’ in Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart as a Means of Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd

A propos de l’auteur

Michael Y. Bennett is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA, where he teaches courses on modern drama. He is the author of Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd (2011/2013), Words, Space, and the Audience (2012), and Narrating the Past through Theatre (2012). He is the editor of Refiguring Oscar Wilde’s Salome (2011); and the co-editor of Eugene O’Neill’s One-Act Plays: New Critical Perspectives (2012) as well as editor of The Edward Albee Review .