Absurdist fiction

Last updated

Absurdist fiction is a genre of novels, plays, poems, films, or other media that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. [1] In some cases, it may overlap with literary nonsense.

Contents

The absurdist genre of literature arose in the 1950s and 1960s, first predominantly in France and Germany, prompted by post-war disillusionment. Absurdist fiction is a reaction against the surge in Romanticism in Paris in the 1830s, the collapse of religious tradition in Germany, and the societal and philosophical revolution led by the expressions of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. [2]

Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire, dark humor, incongruity, the abasement of reason, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing". [3] Absurdist fiction in play form is known as Absurdist Theatre. Both genres are characterised by a focus on the experience of the characters, centred on the idea that life is incongruous, irreconcilable and meaningless. [4] The integral characteristic of absurdist fiction involves the experience of the struggle to find an intrinsic purpose in life, depicted by characters in their display of meaningless actions in the futile events they take part in.

Absurdism as a philosophical movement is an extension of, or divergence from, Existentialism, which focuses on the pointlessness of mankind and specifically the emotional angst and anxiety present when the existence of purpose is challenged. [5] Existentialist and agnostic perspectives are explored in absurdist novels and theatre in their expression of plot and characters. [6] Major absurdist authors include Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. [7]

Characteristics

A great deal of absurdist fiction may be humorous or irrational in nature. The absurdist humor is described as a manner of comedy that relies on non-sequiturs, violation of causality, and unpredictable juxtapositions. [8] However, the hallmark of the genre is neither comedy nor nonsense, but rather, the study of human behavior under circumstances (whether realistic or fantastical) that appear to be purposeless and philosophically absurd. Absurdist fiction posits little judgment about characters or their actions; that task is left to the reader. Also, the "moral" of the story is generally not explicit, and the themes or characters' realizations — if any — are often ambiguous in nature.

Additionally, unlike many other forms of fiction, absurdist works will not necessarily have a traditional plot structure (i.e., rising action, climax, falling action, etc.). The conventional elements of fiction such as plot, characterization, and development tend to be absent. [9] Some scholars explain that this fiction entails a "going away from" a norm. [10] There is also the case of the questioning of the validity of human reason, from which perceptions of the natural laws arise. [10]

The absurdist fiction also does not seek to appeal to the so-called collective unconscious as it is fiercely individualistic and almost exclusively focuses on exploring an individual's or a being's subjective feelings of its existence. [9]

Overview

The absurdist genre grew out of the modernist literature of the late 19th and early 20th century in direct opposition to the Victorian literature which was prominent just prior to this period. It was largely influenced by the existentialist and nihilist movements in philosophy, and the Dada and surrealist movements in art. Existential and nihilistic philosophical influences on absurdist fiction were resultant of the post-war disillusionment. Absurdist fiction novelists and composers demanded freedom from the conventions prevalent in the 1940 philosophical movement in France. Other historical events that impacted the literary movement's style and philosophy include the atomic bomb and the Cold War.

Psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of British Columbia published a report in 2009 showing that reading absurdist tales improved test subjects' ability to find patterns. Their findings summarized that, when people have to work to find consistency and meaning in a fragmented story, it increases "the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning statistical regularities". [11] [12]

Context and origins

Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Albert Camus, Saul Bellow, Donald Barthelme and Cormac McCarthy are considered to be the most well-known composers of absurdist fiction. Kafka (1883–1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist, and a notorious absurdist. Writers that influenced Kafka include Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens and more. Kafka's most popular fictional stories include "The Judgment", published in 1912; The Metamorphosis , published 1915; "In the Penal Colony", published 1919; and "A Hunger Artist", published 1922. The Trial , written between 1914 and 1915, is recognised as Kafka's most well-known fiction. In its "mythic symbolism of a world gone berserk", [13] Kafka's use of mythology, comedy, aphorism and surrealism epitomise the distinctive features of absurdist fiction. [14] Franz Kafka's influence on absurdism was so great that he is referred to by some as the "King of the Absurd" and a leader of the absurd movement. Others argue that Kafka was predominantly a Surrealist, however Kafka clarifies his unique style as "the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective 'Kafkaesque'". [15] Samuel Beckett was also an early absurdist; an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. Beckett's well-known Waiting for Godot , premiered in 1953, is classified within absurdist theatre using techniques of tragicomedy. The characteristics introduced by Beckett included bitter humour and despair, and a vivid and spontaneous improvisation on the absurdity of theatre (Dickson, Andrew, 2017). Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian French playwright, one of the foremost composers of French avant-garde theatre and a leader of absurdism. Ionesco's The Chairs (1952) was branded as a "tragic farce" by Ionesco himself in its experimentation of absurdist motifs, existentialism and nonsensical verse, of which elaborates on incommunicability in our human lives. [4]

Ideology

The term "absurd" has roots in the Latin "absurdus", meaning "contrary to reason" or "inharmonious". [16] The term elaborates on the concept of the modern word corresponding to the identification of the irrational and incongruous nature of everyday life. The ideology and philosophy behind the absurdist fiction genre stems from nihilism and existentialism extracted from the 20th-century world. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), known as the "father of existentialism", was a prolific Danish writer who opposed conventional boundaries of philosophy, psychology, theology, fiction and literary criticism. [17] Kierkegaard's philosophy contends with the plausibility of Christendom, and inherently disputes the sense of purpose it prompts in personal life. The concept of the absurd was used by Kierkegaard to term the point in which faith becomes indefensible, yet valid for those who employ it, and it alone. [6] Kierkegaard heavily influenced the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Existentialism as a philosophical approach or theory emphasises the single individual's existence and the concept of an individual as a free agent in determining their own meaning or purpose in life. On the other hand, nihilism is the recognition that life has no intrinsic meaning. Absurdist fiction in relation to existentialism expresses what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose, therefore all communication breaks down. Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) is an absurdist fiction text which emphasises in depth the notion of mankind's inability to communicate with each other. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and a Latin and Greek egg scholar who also yielded profound inspiration in Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. Nietzsche is another primary influencer on the philosophy and ideology behind the absurd. His interest in nihilism, in particular his views on Christianity and God, alludes to the traditions of the Western world in their reliance on religion as a "moral compass" and source of meaning. [18] Nietzsche claimed that this dependence is now unviable, appearing in his novel The Gay Science , published 1882, translated in 1974. The writings of Nietzsche influenced absurdist fiction in the influence on Sartre and Albert Camus. Particularly, Camus' understanding of nihilism was heavily motivated by the conception that Nietzsche put forth of life and death and the nihilistic perspectives of such. [18]

Absurdist fiction in novels

French writer Albert Camus is the novelist that most literary critics date the concept of absurdist fiction to, with Camus' most famous novel, L'Étranger (The Stranger, 1942), and his philosophical essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942). The Bohemian, German-speaking, Franz Kafka is another absurdist fiction novelist. Kafka's novel The Trial was published in 1925 after Kafka's death in 1924. Kafka's novel encompasses mankind's inability to engage in communication in a purposeless world.

Examples

Examples of absurdist fiction writers include:

Individual absurdist works include:

Examples of notable absurdist filmmakers include:

Characteristics and techniques

Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) extracts from the Greek fable of a man forced to continuously roll a rock up a mountain only for it to roll back down the mountain due to its own weight, a dilemma that lasts for eternity. Camus elucidates his own symbolism as a representation of the human condition in a world where we face the universal difficulty of making sense of events; however instead of turning to suicide that we must reconcile with the "elusive feeling of absurdity" and endure it to the best of our abilities. [27] Franz Kafka's The Trial (1925) follows the tale of Josef K., a man who is arrested and prosecuted by an authority that is remote and inaccessible; both him and the reader are not told the nature of his crime or why he was prosecuted. Kafka uses restrained prose throughout the novel to add dramatic irony [28] as well as the illogical and inconsistent line of events of the arrest and court case of Joseph K. Kafka's novel can be perceived to imply a gap in the rational world as a result of hyper-rationalization consuming society, an example highlighted by Kafka being the judiciary. Kafka employs erroneous alliteration and literary manipulation to compose a nonsensical, existentialist novel that exemplifies the inhumanity, alienation and absurdity persisting in the modern world alongside the impacts of totalitarianism, injustice and bureaucracy as a whole. [29]

Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd is termed as a post-World War One designation for absurdist fiction plays, specifically those written by primarily European playwrights in the late twentieth century, also as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Martin Esslin, a literary critic, coined the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his 1960 essay Theatre of the Absurd. Esslin related these selected plays based on the broad theme of the absurd, similar to the way Camus used the term in his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus . The ideology of the Theatre of the Absurd is drawn from existentialism and expresses the result of human existence becoming deprived of meaning or purpose and the result of all communication thus breaking down. Logical construction and argument within absurdist theatre gave way to characteristics of irrational and illogical speech and the ultimate conclusion of silence. The Theatre of the Absurd involves a fascination with absurdity in a range of forms; the existential, philosophical, emotional and dramaturgical. The Theatre of the Absurd as a dramatic form inherently pushes theatre to the extreme, while posing questions about what both reality and unreality truly look like. [27] Martin Esslin named the four defining playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd movement as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. [30] In later editions of his essay he included a fifth playwright, Harold Pinter. Other writers that are also associated with this movement by Esslin and other critics are Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Edward Albee, Boris Vian, and Jean Tardieu.

Characteristics

The Theatre of the Absurd subverts conventional theatrical form audiences have come to expect when viewing a play. Movement of the plot is arbitrary; characters of absurdist theatre are mostly unfamiliar and strangely motivated, scenery is often unrecognizable and sometimes unchanging or desolate, and dialogue appears to be nonsense. To absurdist playwrights, chaos and irrationality represent reality better than rationality and order. Plays can be both tragic and comic in nature, characteristic of the tragicomedy genre in theatre.

Examples

Theatre of the Absurd plays

Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) is a memorable absurdist theatre play. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953) is an absurdist theatre play with two acts using dramatic techniques. Other examples include Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit (1944), Max Frisch's play The Firebugs (1953) and Ezio D'Errico's play The Anthill and Time of the Locusts (1954). Thornton Wilder's The Long Christmas Dinner (1931) and Jean Tardieu's Underground Lovers (1934) are earlier examples.

Techniques and devices examples

Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) is a dominating play central to the Theatre of the Absurd, its "dreamlike symphony of nonsensical speech and disjointed associations expose how hopeless human communication is". [31] The "nonsensical speech" and "disjointed associations" are key elements of the Theatre of the Absurd. Most of the dialogue in Ionesco's play has little meaning and frequently there is outright gibberish in the actors' speeches. The satire and nonsensical discourse present throughout Ionesco's text serves his purpose in presenting how nonsensical mundane life can be. Ionesco's engagement with existentialism is also characteristic of absurdist theatre, and distinct in the utilisation of the seemingly ridiculous English language and society's unwillingness to communicate with each other. [32] Ionesco's The Bald Soprano encompasses mankind's inability to engage in communication in a purposeless world, reiterating the influence of Existentialism on Absurdist Fiction and how this presents in texts within the Theatre of the Absurd literary genre.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953), an originally French text, is an absurdist theatre drama that is described as one of the most important plays of the 20th century [33] despite its early reception. The play was first performed on January 5, 1953, at Theatre de babylone in Paris. The reception of the play in the 1950s can be interpreted by critics reviews. Literary critic Vivian Mercer claimed that the play was "a play in which nothing happens, twice", alluding to the two acts that take a cyclical form. [34] Alfonso Sastre, another literary critic reviewing Beckett's text, described the play as "a death certificate for hope"; he continues, "what is so fascinating about waiting for Godot; [is] that nothing happens. It is a lucid testimony of nothingness." [35] Beckett’s desolate universe in his play is rendered by Absurdist techniques; an unchanging landscape, characters subjected to random and whimsical acts of violence with cyclical discourse. Beckett captures the sense of perpetual anticipation for meaning in humanity in the portrayal of the relationship between ‘Gogo’ and ‘Didi’, a strong interdependence mixed with irritability. The tragicomedy element to Beckett's absurdist fiction play adds a comic futility that can be compared to slapstick comedy and cartoon characters such as the characters Tom and Jerry. The relationship between the two characters in Waiting for Godot (Vladimir and Estragon) is whimsical, interdependent yet irritable. Their nature, dialogue and interactions are reminiscent of familiar comical duos such as Laurel and Hardy and Tom and Jerry. [36]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Camus</span> French philosopher and writer (1913–1960)

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Existentialism</span> Philosophical form of enquiry into subjective existence

Existentialism is a family of views and forms of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world and free will, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.

<i>Waiting for Godot</i> Play by Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot is a play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett's reworking of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled "a tragicomedy in two acts".

<i>The Myth of Sisyphus</i> 1942 essay by Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus is a 1942 philosophical essay by Albert Camus. Influenced by philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche, Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd. The absurd lies in the juxtaposition between the fundamental human need to attribute meaning to life and the "unreasonable silence" of the universe in response. Camus claims that the realization of the absurd does not justify suicide, and instead requires "revolt". He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life. In the final chapter, Camus compares the absurdity of man's life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again just as it nears the top. The essay concludes, "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugène Ionesco</span> Romanian-French playwright (1909–1994)

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco instigated a revolution in ideas and techniques of drama, beginning with his "anti play", The Bald Soprano which contributed to the beginnings of what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd, which includes a number of plays that, following the ideas of the philosopher Albert Camus, explore concepts of absurdism and surrealism. He was made a member of the Académie française in 1970, and was awarded the 1970 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the 1973 Jerusalem Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre of the absurd</span> Theatrical genre since the 1950s

The theatre of the absurd is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of theatre the plays represent. The plays focus largely on ideas of existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down. The structure of the plays is typically a round shape, with the finishing point the same as the starting point. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to the ultimate conclusion—silence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Absurdism</span> Theory that life in general is meaningless

Absurdism is the philosophical theory that the universe is irrational and meaningless. It states that trying to find meaning leads people into a conflict with the world. This conflict can be between rational man and an irrational universe, between intention and outcome, or between subjective assessment and objective worth, but the precise definition of the term is disputed. Absurdism claims that existence as a whole is absurd. It differs in this regard from the less global thesis that some particular situations, persons, or phases in life are absurd.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Authenticity (philosophy)</span> Concept in existential psychology and philosophy

Authenticity is a concept of personality in the fields of psychology, existential psychotherapy, existentialist philosophy, and aesthetics. In existentialism, authenticity is the degree to which a person's actions are congruent with their values and desires, despite external pressures to social conformity. The conscious self comes to terms with the condition of Geworfenheit, of having been thrown into an absurd world not of their own making, thereby encountering external forces and influences different from and other than the Self. A person’s lack of authenticity is considered bad faith in dealing with other people and with one's self; thus, authenticity is in the instruction of the Oracle of Delphi: “Know thyself.” Concerning authenticity in art, the philosophers Jean Paul Sartre and Theodor Adorno held opposing views and opinions about jazz, a genre of American music; Sartre said that jazz is authentic and Adorno said that jazz is inauthentic. Many musical subcultures require artistic authenticity, lest the community consider an artist to be a poseur for lacking authenticity ; artistic authenticity is integral to many genres of music, including but not limited to genres of rock, club music, and hip-hop.

<i>The Bald Soprano</i> 1950 absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco

La Cantatrice chauve – translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna – is the first play written by Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco.

20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts. For more on this, see French art of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literary modernism</span> Western literary movement, originating in the late 19th century

Modernist literature originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterised by a self-conscious separation from traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new." This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of the time. The immense human costs of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed, and much modernist writing engages with the technological advances and societal changes of modernity moving into the 20th century. In Modernist Literature, Mary Ann Gillies notes that these literary themes share the "centrality of a conscious break with the past", one that "emerges as a complex response across continents and disciplines to a changing world".

Philosophical fiction is any fiction that devotes a significant portion of its content to the sort of questions addressed by philosophy. It might explore any facet of the human condition, including the function and role of society, the nature and motivation of human acts, the purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of art in human lives, the role of experience or reason in the development of knowledge, whether there exists free will, or any other topic of philosophical interest. Philosophical fiction includes the novel of ideas, which can also fall under the genre of science fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, and bildungsroman.

Villy Sørensen was a Danish short story writer, philosopher and literary critic of the Modernist tradition. His fiction was heavily influenced by his philosophical ideas, and he has been compared to Franz Kafka in this regard.

The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. To existentialists, human beings—through their consciousness—create their own values and determine a meaning for their life because the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value. That identity or value must be created by the individual. By posing the acts that constitute them, they make their existence more significant.

Atheistic existentialism is a kind of existentialism which strongly diverged from the Christian existential works of Søren Kierkegaard and developed within the context of an atheistic world view. The philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche provided existentialism's theoretical foundation in the 19th century, although their differing views on religion proved essential to the development of alternate types of existentialism. Atheistic existentialism was formally recognized after the 1943 publication of Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre and Sartre later explicitly alluded to it in Existentialism is a Humanism in 1946.

Jewish existentialism is a category of work by Jewish authors dealing with existentialist themes and concepts, and intended to answer theological questions that are important in Judaism. The existential angst of Job is an example from the Hebrew Bible of the existentialist theme. Theodicy and post-Holocaust theology make up a large part of 20th century Jewish existentialism.

Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no objective meaning or purpose. The inherent meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism, where one can potentially create their own subjective "meaning" or "purpose". The supposed conflict between our desire for meaning and the reality of a meaningless world is explored in the philosophical school of absurdism. Of all types of nihilism, existential nihilism has received the most literary and philosophical attention.

This is a list of articles in continental philosophy.

The concept of "The Void" in philosophy encompasses the ideas of nothingness and emptiness, a notion that has been interpreted and debated across various schools of metaphysics. In ancient Greek philosophy, the Void was discussed by thinkers like Democritus, who saw it as a necessary space for atoms to move, thereby enabling the existence of matter. Contrasting this, Aristotle famously denied the existence of a true Void, arguing that nature inherently avoids a vacuum.

<i>At the Existentialist Café</i> 2016 book by Sarah Bakewell

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails is a 2016 book written by Sarah Bakewell that covers the philosophy and history of the 20th century movement existentialism. The book provides an account of the modern day existentialists who came into their own before and during the Second World War. The book discusses the ideas of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, and how his teaching influenced the rise of existentialism through the likes of Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, who are the main protagonists of the book. The title refers to an incident in which Sartre's close friend and fellow philosopher Raymond Aron startled him when they were in a cafe, by pointing to the glass in front of him and stating, "You can make a philosophy out of this cocktail."

References

  1. ↑ Henderson, Greig E.; Brown, Christopher (March 31, 1997). "Glossary of Literary Theory - Absurdism". University of Toronto. Archived from the original on 2016-01-12.
  2. ↑ Wegener, A. (1967). The Absurd in Modern Literature. Books Abroad, 41(2), 150-156. doi:10.2307/40121546
  3. ↑ Cornwell, Neil (2006), The Absurd in Literature, New York, NY: Manchester University Press, ISBN   978-0-7190-7409-7
  4. 1 2 Esslin, M. (1961). The theatre of the absurd (Rev. and enl. ed.). Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
  5. ↑ Crowell, Steven, "Existentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
  6. 1 2 Paul, M. (2016). The Absurd beyond Modernism. University of Sydney.
  7. ↑ Dickson, A., 2020. Nonsense Talk: Theatre Of The Absurd. [online] The British Library
  8. ↑ Reinsch, Paul; Whitfield, Lynn; Weiner, Robert (2017). Python beyond Python: Critical Engagements with Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 224. ISBN   9783319513843.
  9. 1 2 Cai, Rong (2004). The Subject in Crisis in Contemporary Chinese Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 92. ISBN   0824827619.
  10. 1 2 Harper, Graeme (2002). Comedy, Fantasy and Colonialism. London: Continuum. p. 111. ISBN   0826448666.
  11. ↑ Jacobs, Tom (16 September 2009). "This Is Your Brain on Kafka". Pacific Standard.
  12. ↑ Proulx, Travis; Heine, Steven J. (September 2009). "Connections From Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar". Psychological Science. 20 (9): 1125–1131. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02414.x. PMID   19656338. S2CID   7630993.
  13. ↑ Edwards, I., 2020. The Essence of Kafkaesque. The New York Times.
  14. ↑ Edwards, I., 2020. The Essence of Kafkaesque. The New York Times
  15. ↑ Kafka, F., Bernofsky, S., & Anderson, M. (2016). The metamorphosis : a new translation, texts and contexts, criticism (First edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
  16. ↑ Gavins, J. (2013). The Literary Absurd. In Reading the Absurd (pp. 1-9). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  17. ↑ McDonald, W. Søren Kierkegaard, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
  18. 1 2 Gordon, M. (2015). Camus, Nietzsche, and the Absurd: Rebellion and Scorn versus Humor and Laughter. Philosophy and Literature 39(2), 364-378.
  19. ↑ Cromwell, Neil (2006). The Absurd in Literature. Manchester University Press. pp. 2–3, 45, 186–7.
  20. ↑ Abrams, M. H.; Harpham, Geoffrey (2013). "Literature of the Absurd". A Glossary of Literary Terms. Cengage Learning. pp. 2–3.
  21. ↑ "The Resurgence of Absurdism: Animation and the Neo-Absurdist Movement".
  22. ↑ Rector, Rob (2020). "The surrealistic Friend of the World works more like a stage play than a film" . Retrieved 12 September 2021.
  23. ↑ Riddhiman, Basu (15 July 2011). "Absurdist Themes In The Virgin Spring" . Retrieved 4 July 2016.
  24. ↑ Santander, Hugo N. (2002). "Luis Buñuel, Existential Filmmaker". Archived from the original on 2 May 2015. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
  25. ↑ Conrad, Mark T. (1 March 2009). The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN   978-0-8131-3869-5.
  26. ↑ Romney, Jonathan (2018). "Yorgos Lanthimos, director of The Lobster, on his wild, star-studded life of Queen Anne". TheGuardian.com . Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  27. 1 2 Dickson, A., 2020. Nonsense Talk: Theatre Of The Absurd. [online] The British Library.
  28. ↑ Winterhalter, B., 2019. Franz Kafka's The Trial—It's Funny Because It's True | JSTOR Daily.
  29. ↑ Robertson, R. (2015). Carefully constructed: The language of Franz Kafka | OUPblog.
  30. ↑ Esslin, Martin (1961). The Theatre of the Absurd. OCLC 329986
  31. ↑ Santilli, P., (2020). Absurdity Sings In Ionesco's 'The Bald Soprano'. San Diego Union-Tribune.
  32. ↑ Ashlee, L. (2018). The Bald Soprano and Absurdism | ACT I, Inc.
  33. ↑ Coughlan, S. (2013). Still waiting for Godot. BBC News Education.
  34. ↑ Smythe, J. (2020). WAITING FOR GODOT - Riddled with vivid snapshots of the human condition. Theatreview.
  35. ↑ Pronko, L. (1962). Avant-garde: the experimental theater in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  36. ↑ Brantley, B. (2018). Review: A ‘Waiting for Godot’ as Comically Futile as a Looney Tune. The New York Times.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.