Facts about Absurdist Literature

1. 06

   Eugène Ionesco's 1950 play The Bald Soprano, a pioneering work of absurdist literature, was inspired by the repetitive, nonsensical phrases in an English language phrasebook.

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2. 05

   Franz Kafka's darkly comic and surreal fiction, including The Metamorphosis and The Trial, so influenced absurdist literature that 'Kafkaesque' became a widely recognized literary term.

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3. 04

   Albert Camus's 1942 novel The Stranger is a foundational work of absurdist literature, depicting a protagonist emotionally detached from the world around him.

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4. 03

   The Theatre of the Absurd, a term coined by critic Martin Esslin in 1961, groups playwrights like Ionesco, Beckett, and Pinter under a shared dramatic philosophy.

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5. 02

   Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a landmark work of absurdist literature in which the central characters wait endlessly for someone who never arrives.

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6. 01

   Absurdist literature is rooted in the philosophical concept that human existence is meaningless and the universe indifferent, a theme central to Camus and Kafka.

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