Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Michael Y. Bennett
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
ISBN:  

9781032188133

ISBN 10:   1032188138
Pages:   512
Publication Date:   26 December 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

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 Nietzsche’s 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 Beckett’s Fiction; 15 Credo quia absurdum est: The Subversion of the Rational in Samuel Beckett’s Early Poetics; 16 Samuel Beckett’s Television Plays; 17 Samuel Beckett’s Radio Plays; SECTION 4 1950s: The First Wave; 18 Arthur Adamov; 19 Jean Genet; 20 Eugène 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 Kennedy’s 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 Arrabal’s Panic Allowances for the Absurd; 31 Friedrich Dürrenmatt; 32 St. Sisyphus: Günter Grass’s Absurdist Social Democracy; 33 (Re)Considering Sławomir Mrożek; PART III Absurdist Legacies; SECTION 6 Feminist, LGBTQ+, and Multiethnic Absurdist Literature; 34 Amusing and Shocking: Caryl Churchill’s Absurdist Drama; 35 Split Britches and the Camp Absurd; 36 ""Beckett Just Seems So Black to Me"": Suzan‑Lori 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 Bird’s‑eye View of the Absurd in the Spanish‑speaking 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

Reviews

Author Information

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.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions