A post-Second World War dramatic movement in which logical structure, causality and conventional dialogue dissolve, dramatizing a world in which human existence lacks inherent meaning or purpose and communication itself breaks down. The critic Martin Esslin named the movement in his 1961 book The Theatre of the Absurd, grouping together playwrights including Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov and Jean Genet who had not considered themselves a school before his study. Esslin's book has been called the most influential theatrical text of the 1960s. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Disputed
Period, From (Year)Martin Esslin's own 1961 study, which named the movement, treats Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) as an early landmark and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953) as its most influential work; because Esslin grouped independently written plays under a single retrospective label rather than describing a self-declared movement, no single founding date is universally accepted. Partially Attested
Period, To (Year)Source dates the movement's core dramatists to the 1950s and early 1960s without naming a single terminal year; 1962 approximates the end of that early-1960s span, the same decade-fraction rounding convention already used elsewhere on this atlas (for example Dark Romanticism's 1879 for the late 1870s). Connections
Associated Authors
Considered by critic Martin Esslin, who coined the term, to be a key figure of the Theatre of the Absurd; Waiting for Godot (1952) is among the movement's most influential plays.
Source Samuel Beckett (Wikipedia)
Held Differently
Absurdist Fiction, Genres A different facet of the same territory, not a rejection: Absurdist Fiction is the broader prose-and-drama genre; Theatre of the Absurd names the mid-20th-century dramatists working the mode specifically on stage.
Source Absurdist Fiction (Wikipedia)
Associated With
Source Theatre of the Absurd (Wikipedia)
Influenced By
Open Questions
Source Theatre of the Absurd (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Theatre of the Absurd (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)lead sectionQuote, lead section
The theatre of the absurd (French: théâtre de l'absurde) 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.
2. Absurdism (Encyclopedia.com)
Encyclopedia.comBody text, opening definition of the movement's dated spanQuote, Body text, opening definition of the movement's dated span
Absurdism, and its more specific companion term Theatre of the Absurd, refers to the works of a group of Western European and American dramatists writing and producing plays in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Martin Esslin (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)on coining the termQuote, on coining the term
known for coining the term 'theatre of the absurd' in his 1961 book The Theatre of the Absurd
Samuel Beckett (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Associated Authors: Samuel Beckett, Middle period section, Theatre of the AbsurdQuote, Associated Authors: Samuel Beckett, Middle period section, Theatre of the Absurd
Beckett is considered to be one of the last modernist writers and a key figure in what Martin Esslin called the 'Theatre of the Absurd.'
Absurdist Fiction (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Absurdist FictionQuote, Associated With: Absurdist Fiction
Absurdism as a philosophical movement is an extension of, or divergence from, Existentialism, which focuses on the pointlessness of mankind.
Open Questions (1 open question)
When did the Theatre of the Absurd end as a period?
A critical category applied by Martin Esslin to a body of plays, mainly from the 1950s and 1960s, rather than an organized movement with a founding or dissolution date; sources describe its era loosely without naming a closing year.
What would resolve this A literary-historical source identifying a specific closing work, event or year for the Absurdist theatrical period, or explicit confirmation that the category has no closing boundary.
Theatre history and periodization scholarshipTheatre of the Absurd (Wikipedia)
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