ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Though no formal Absurdist movement existed as such, dramatists as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, Harold Pinter, and a few others shared a pessimistic vision of humanity struggling vainly to find a purpose and to control its fate.

Detailed explanation-2: -Beckett, reflecting these issues in his plays, can be considered to be a prominent absurdist playwright and his play Endgame is a typical absurdist play which depicts the characteristics of this kind of drama and shows the emptiness and alienation in the modern world.

Detailed explanation-3: -But in theatre the word ‘absurdism’ is often used more specifically, to refer to primarily European drama written in the 1950s and 1960s by writers including Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter, often grouped together as ‘the theatre of the absurd’, a phrase coined by the critic Martin Esslin.

Detailed explanation-4: -Samuel Beckett: the big one As the father of absurdist theatre, no examination of the form can take place without looking to Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright known for Endgame and his most famous and successful play, Waiting for Godot.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Theatre of the Absurd is a movement made up of many diverse plays, most of which were written between 1940 and 1960. When first performed, these plays shocked their audiences as they were startlingly different than anything that had been previously staged. In fact, many of them were labelled as “anti-plays.”