Edward Albee, the well-known dramatic pioneer who introduced the European 'Absurd Drama' to America, has been paid a grest attention as a major American playwright and a successor of O'Neill, Willlams, and Miller. Admitting that he has learned a lot of techniques from the European Absurd Dramatists ...
Edward Albee, the well-known dramatic pioneer who introduced the European 'Absurd Drama' to America, has been paid a grest attention as a major American playwright and a successor of O'Neill, Willlams, and Miller. Admitting that he has learned a lot of techniques from the European Absurd Dramatists and having got the decisive inspiration from their works, Albee doesn't blindly imitate the 'European' Absurd Drama.
The most important aspect that distinguishes Albee's plays from the European Absurd Drama is the ultimate belief in man of his works. If it is possible to say that concern of the European Absurd Drama is centered on showing us the absurd situations where human lives remain estranged, meaningless, and even nonsensical, it will also be possible to say that Albee's drama reveals not only the bleak human situation itself, but a ray of hope that such situations can be improved with human efforts.
This, however, must not be accepted as the reason to regard Albee as a rash optimlst. Many characters in Albee's plays succeed in breaking the wall of absurdity they themselves have built and returned to the reality. But, once returned, they cannot help confessing they are afraid of 'Virginia Woolf,' because the world of reality is too hard and morbid to live in. And, here, Albee is trying to tell us that, no matter how harsh and cruel the reality is, the courage that daringly confronts it will enable man to keep up his self-respect and the humanness.
This Albee's attitude on the absurd leads to the different dramatic forms compared with European absurd dramatists'. His drama, unlike European Absurd Drama, has a Progress Linear Development, composed of beginning, middle and end. Language in his drama also verges on not that of the absurd drama but that of the realistic drama.
This paper is intended to examine the relation between his attitude on the absurd and the dramatic forms in his plays, The Zoo Story and The American Dream.
The Zoo Story deals with the loneliness enforced upon each individual by society and the failure of an atteapt to live in harmony with other human beings. Albee's zoo, where everyone is separated by bars from everyone else, is a metaphor for the contemporary society, where human beings are not merely separated but protected from each other by the soclal order that they impose upon themselves. According to Albee's play human relationships are a combination of kindness and cruelty. Man had managed to secure himself from the reality with artificial barriers in which he has encircled himself. In his plays, Albee uncovers the possibility of overcoming the alienation under the isolated situation by means of Jerry's self-sacrificing death.
As Albee says that The American Dream is an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial values for real ones in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation and vacuity, The American Dream is a parable criticizing American ideals.
In writing these plays, Albee employs Progress Linear Development. The reason is that he doesn't completely exclude the possibility of redemption of man. The conventional drama has Progress Linear Development, which symbolizes the order exists in this world and underlines the significance of the world.
He also uses realistic language in drama to soie extent, because of trying to logically solve existential situations of the moderns.
Consequently, Albee's dramatic forms are closely related to his attitude on the awareness of the absurd, in other words, his dramatic forms are methods of expressing his viewpoints of the absurd.
Edward Albee, the well-known dramatic pioneer who introduced the European 'Absurd Drama' to America, has been paid a grest attention as a major American playwright and a successor of O'Neill, Willlams, and Miller. Admitting that he has learned a lot of techniques from the European Absurd Dramatists and having got the decisive inspiration from their works, Albee doesn't blindly imitate the 'European' Absurd Drama.
The most important aspect that distinguishes Albee's plays from the European Absurd Drama is the ultimate belief in man of his works. If it is possible to say that concern of the European Absurd Drama is centered on showing us the absurd situations where human lives remain estranged, meaningless, and even nonsensical, it will also be possible to say that Albee's drama reveals not only the bleak human situation itself, but a ray of hope that such situations can be improved with human efforts.
This, however, must not be accepted as the reason to regard Albee as a rash optimlst. Many characters in Albee's plays succeed in breaking the wall of absurdity they themselves have built and returned to the reality. But, once returned, they cannot help confessing they are afraid of 'Virginia Woolf,' because the world of reality is too hard and morbid to live in. And, here, Albee is trying to tell us that, no matter how harsh and cruel the reality is, the courage that daringly confronts it will enable man to keep up his self-respect and the humanness.
This Albee's attitude on the absurd leads to the different dramatic forms compared with European absurd dramatists'. His drama, unlike European Absurd Drama, has a Progress Linear Development, composed of beginning, middle and end. Language in his drama also verges on not that of the absurd drama but that of the realistic drama.
This paper is intended to examine the relation between his attitude on the absurd and the dramatic forms in his plays, The Zoo Story and The American Dream.
The Zoo Story deals with the loneliness enforced upon each individual by society and the failure of an atteapt to live in harmony with other human beings. Albee's zoo, where everyone is separated by bars from everyone else, is a metaphor for the contemporary society, where human beings are not merely separated but protected from each other by the soclal order that they impose upon themselves. According to Albee's play human relationships are a combination of kindness and cruelty. Man had managed to secure himself from the reality with artificial barriers in which he has encircled himself. In his plays, Albee uncovers the possibility of overcoming the alienation under the isolated situation by means of Jerry's self-sacrificing death.
As Albee says that The American Dream is an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial values for real ones in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation and vacuity, The American Dream is a parable criticizing American ideals.
In writing these plays, Albee employs Progress Linear Development. The reason is that he doesn't completely exclude the possibility of redemption of man. The conventional drama has Progress Linear Development, which symbolizes the order exists in this world and underlines the significance of the world.
He also uses realistic language in drama to soie extent, because of trying to logically solve existential situations of the moderns.
Consequently, Albee's dramatic forms are closely related to his attitude on the awareness of the absurd, in other words, his dramatic forms are methods of expressing his viewpoints of the absurd.
주제어
#Albee, Edward
#Edward Albee
#부조리극
#부조리 상황
#인식태도
#극형식
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