Edward Albee And Absurdism

In Edward Albee and Absurdism, Michael Y. Bennett has assembled an outstanding team of Edward Albee scholars to address Albee’s affiliation with Martin Esslin’s label, “Theatre of the Absurd,” examining whether or not this label is appropriate.

Edward Albee (b. 1928) is recognized as one of the major American dramatists of our time. He is considered the most powerful and controversial writer of America after the eras of O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Critical assessments of his work as a playwright vary from passionate applause to downright denigration. He has occasioned critical responses proving himself an enigma for critics, scholars and reviewers who have failed to reach a consensus on him as a playwright. Robert Brustein, one of America’s leading theatrical observers, displayed an arbitrary mentality of astounding presumptuousness in a review of The Zoo Story printed in Seasons of Discontent (1966) and hinted at a ‘masochistic-homosexual perfume’ in it. Similarly, in approaching The American Dream and Death of Bessie Smith, he adopted a dismissive attitude and felt only the slightest obligation to discuss the plays, preferring to attack the general decadence of American theatre. Martin Esslin precipitated a host of articles in which Albee was alternately praised and denounced for his success or failure. Philip Roth assailed him for writing ‘thinly-veiled homosexual fantasies’. Richard Schechner’s violent denunciation is based on the ‘morbidity and sexual perversity’ in Albee’s first three-act play. He dismissed the playwright as a ‘plague in our midst’ and a ‘corrosive influence on our theatre’. Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? invited the adverse remark as “a filthy play.” There are other critics as Gerald Weals, Brian Way, Rose A. Zimbardo, Gilbert Debusscher, Alan Schneider, Harold Clurman, Diana Trilling, Michael E. Rutenberg, Anne Paolucci, C.W.E. Bigsby, Richard E. Amacher etc., who have approached the plays of Edward Albee and expressed their views in favour of or against , them. To record all that has been said on Albee and his plays, or to give a survey of the critical material on Albee, the dramatist, is not possible in the limited space at my disposal here. Further, the present study is not intended to establish the reputation of Albee. Its direct and main drive is to analyze and expose the Absurdist themes which form the fundamentals of his significant plays.

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? shocked audiences and critics alike with its assault on decorum. At base though, the play is simply a love story: an examination of a long-wedded life, filled with the hopes, dreams, disappointments, and pain that accompany the passing of many years together. While the ethos of the play is tragicomic, it is the anachronistic, melodramatic secret object—the nonexistent "son"—that upends the audience’s sense of theatrical normalcy. The mean and vulgar bile spewed among the characters hides these elements, making it feel like something entirely "new." As Michael Y. Bennett reveals, the play is the same emperor, just wearing new clothes. In short, it is straight out of the grand tradition of living room drama: Ibsen, Chekhov, Glaspell, Hellmann, O’Neill, Wilder, Miller, Williams, and Albee.

Edward Albee as Theatrical and Dramatic Innovator explores this three-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright’s innovations as a dramatist and theatrical artist and his contributions to the evolution of modern American drama.

This work covers the canon of playwright Edward Albee, perhaps best known as the author of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Comprehensive entries detail the plays and major characters. Other features include biographical information and insights into Albee's artistic beliefs, his understanding of the playwright's responsibility, the importance of music in drama, and the technical craft of writing plays.

Visitors cause trouble for a pair of suburbanites in this Pulitzer Prize–winning play by the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Wealthy middle-aged couple Agnes and Tobias have their complacency shattered when their longtime friends Harry and Edna appear at their doorstep. Claiming an encroaching, nameless “fear” has forced them from their own home, these neighbors bring a firestorm of doubt, recrimination and ultimately solace, upsetting the “delicate balance” of Agnes and Tobias’s household . . . In recent years, A Delicate Balance has enjoyed many and new stunning revivals, running now, including a Broadway production in 1996, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and another at the Alameida Theatre in London in 2011. “Theatrical fireworks.” —The New York Times

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.

"Fresh examination of the works of Thornton Wilder emphasizing continuities in American literature from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries. Sees Wilder as a literary descendant of Edward Taylor who drew from the Puritan worldview and tradition. Includes indepth readings of Shadow of a Doubt, The Trumpet Shall Sound, and others"--Provided by publisher.