Publicação
A Horror of the Vacuum : An Overview of Old Age in Absurdist Literature
| Resumo: | The relevance and lasting influence of artistic expressions of the philosophical concept of the absurd has been highlighted by many scholars, notably by Martin Esslin in his pioneering work The Theatre of the Absurd and by Neil Cornwell in The Absurd in Literature. Interestingly, a cursory glance at the works of the practitioners of the absurd deemed most significant by Esslin (Adamov, Beckett and Ionesco, but also Pinget, Pinter and Hildesheimer) and Cornwell (Daniil Kharms, O’Brien, Kafka and again Beckett) reveals an intriguing pattern: virtually all of them have at least one important work with older people as main characters. In this chapter, my main aim is to understand why old age is so prominent in absurdist literature. First, I will examine some of the most archetypal interactions between the aged protagonists and their absurd universes, refining my working definition of the absurd (wherein “resistance” is an operative word) in the process. Then, after assessing the congruity of outliers and the pertinence of alternative causal explanations for this correlation, I will demonstrate that the thematization of aging characters in absurdist works owes much to the fact that old age may be seen as the radicalization of the human condition. |
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| Autores principais: | Querido, Pedro |
| Assunto: | The absurd Old age Aging Parable Resistance Human condition |
| Ano: | 2019 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | capítulo de livro |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa |
| Resumo: | The relevance and lasting influence of artistic expressions of the philosophical concept of the absurd has been highlighted by many scholars, notably by Martin Esslin in his pioneering work The Theatre of the Absurd and by Neil Cornwell in The Absurd in Literature. Interestingly, a cursory glance at the works of the practitioners of the absurd deemed most significant by Esslin (Adamov, Beckett and Ionesco, but also Pinget, Pinter and Hildesheimer) and Cornwell (Daniil Kharms, O’Brien, Kafka and again Beckett) reveals an intriguing pattern: virtually all of them have at least one important work with older people as main characters. In this chapter, my main aim is to understand why old age is so prominent in absurdist literature. First, I will examine some of the most archetypal interactions between the aged protagonists and their absurd universes, refining my working definition of the absurd (wherein “resistance” is an operative word) in the process. Then, after assessing the congruity of outliers and the pertinence of alternative causal explanations for this correlation, I will demonstrate that the thematization of aging characters in absurdist works owes much to the fact that old age may be seen as the radicalization of the human condition. |
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