Absurdist fiction
Encyclopedia
Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature
, most often employed in novel
s, play
s or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life
, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events. Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire
, dark humour, incongruity, the abasement of reason
, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing." Works of absurdist fiction often explore agnostic or nihilistic
topics.
While a great deal of absurdist fiction may be humorous or irrational in nature, the hallmark of the genre is neither comedy
nor nonsense
, but rather, the study of human behavior under circumstances (whether realistic or fantastical) that appear to be purposeless and philosophically absurd
. Absurdist fiction posits little judgment about characters or their actions; that task is left to the reader. Also, the "moral" of the story is generally not explicit, and the themes or characters' realizations—if any —are often ambiguous in nature. Additionally, unlike many other forms of fiction, absurdist works will not necessarily have a traditional plot structure
(i.e., rising action, climax, falling action, etc.).
The absurdist genre grew out of the modernist literature
of the late 19th and early 20th century in direct opposition to the Victorian literature
which was prominent just prior to this period. It was largely influenced by the existentialist and nihilist movements in philosophy
and the Dada
and surrealist movements in art.
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, most often employed in novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, play
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
s or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life
Meaning of life
The meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", and "What is the meaning of it all?" It has...
, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events. Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
, dark humour, incongruity, the abasement of reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing." Works of absurdist fiction often explore agnostic or nihilistic
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
topics.
While a great deal of absurdist fiction may be humorous or irrational in nature, the hallmark of the genre is neither comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
nor nonsense
Literary nonsense
Literary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning...
, but rather, the study of human behavior under circumstances (whether realistic or fantastical) that appear to be purposeless and philosophically absurd
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
. Absurdist fiction posits little judgment about characters or their actions; that task is left to the reader. Also, the "moral" of the story is generally not explicit, and the themes or characters' realizations—if any —are often ambiguous in nature. Additionally, unlike many other forms of fiction, absurdist works will not necessarily have a traditional plot structure
Dramatic structure
Dramatic structure is the structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film. Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his Poetics...
(i.e., rising action, climax, falling action, etc.).
The absurdist genre grew out of the modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
of the late 19th and early 20th century in direct opposition to the Victorian literature
Victorian literature
Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria . It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century....
which was prominent just prior to this period. It was largely influenced by the existentialist and nihilist movements in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and the Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and surrealist movements in art.
Examples
- Paul AusterPaul AusterPaul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
- The New York TrilogyThe New York TrilogyThe New York Trilogy is a series of novels by Paul Auster. Originally published sequentially as City of Glass , Ghosts and The Locked Room , it has since been collected into a single volume.- Plot introduction :...
(1989) - Edward AlbeeEdward AlbeeEdward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
- The American DreamThe American Dream (play)The American Dream is an early, one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee. It was first staged 24 January 1961 at the York Playhouse in New York City. The play, a satire on American family life, concerns a married couple and their elderly mother...
(1961) - Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
- Waiting for GodotWaiting for GodotWaiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
(1952) - Albert CamusAlbert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
- The StrangerThe Stranger (novel)The Stranger or The Outsider is a novel by Albert Camus published in 1942. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of existentialism, though Camus did not consider himself an existentialist; in fact, its content explores various philosophical schools of thought, including absurdism, as...
(1942), The PlagueThe PlagueThe Plague is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of medical workers finding solidarity in their labour as the Algerian city of Oran is swept by a plague. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition...
(1947), The Fall (1956) - Nikolai GogolNikolai GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
- The Nose (1836) - M. John HarrisonM. John HarrisonM. John Harrison , known as Mike Harrison, is an English author and critic. His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories, , Climbers , and the Kefahuchi Tract series which begins with Light . He currently resides in London.-Early years:Harrison was born in Rugby,...
- LightLight (novel)Light is a science fiction novel written by M. John Harrison and published in 2002. It received the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and a BSFA nomination in 2002, and was shortlisted for the Arthur C...
(2002) - Joseph HellerJoseph HellerJoseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...
- Catch-22Catch-22Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...
(1961) - Rhys HughesRhys HughesRhys Henry Hughes , is a Welsh writer and essayist.Born in Cardiff, Hughes is a prolific short story writer with an eclectic mix of influences, which include Italo Calvino, Milorad Pavić, Jorge Luis Borges, Stanisław Lem, Flann O'Brien, Felipe Alfau, Donald Barthelme and Jack Vance...
- The Postmodern MarinerThe Postmodern MarinerThe Postmodern Mariner is the title of a 2008 collection of short fiction by Welsh fantasy writer Rhys Hughes. The book features eight short stories and one novella that are thematically linked in such a way that the book has a novelistic structure...
(2008) - Eugène IonescoEugène IonescoEugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
- The Bald SopranoThe Bald SopranoLa Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris...
(1950), RhinocerosRhinoceros (play)Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...
(1959) - Franz KafkaFranz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
- The MetamorphosisThe MetamorphosisThe Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world...
(1912), The TrialThe TrialThe Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...
(1925) - Svetoslav MinkovSvetoslav MinkovSvetoslav Konstantinov Minkov was a Bulgarian absurdist fiction writer.- Biography :Minkov was born in Radomir in 1902 in a military family. His older brother Asen died in the Second Balkan War, while his other brother Ivan, a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, committed suicide in 1925 to...
- The Lady With the X-Ray EyesThe Lady With the X-Ray EyesThe Lady With the X-Ray Eyes is an absurdist fiction novel by Bulgarian writer Svetoslav Minkov, first published in Germany in 1934. It contains many sarcastic, parodic, diabolic and absurdist elements concerning the superficial nature of modern society...
(1934) - Harold PinterHarold PinterHarold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
- The Birthday PartyThe Birthday Party (play)The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...
(1958) - Tom RobbinsTom RobbinsThomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins (born July 22, 1936 is an American author. His best-selling novels are serio-comic, often wildly poetic stories with a strong social and philosophical undercurrent, an irreverent bent, and scenes extrapolated from...
- Still Life with WoodpeckerStill Life with WoodpeckerStill Life With Woodpecker is the third novel by Tom Robbins, concerning the love affair between an environmentalist princess and an outlaw. As with most of Robbins's books, it encompasses a broad range of topics, from aliens and redheads to consumerism, the building of bombs, romance, royalty,...
(1980) - Tom StoppardTom StoppardSir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are DeadRosencrantz & Guildenstern Are DeadRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...
(1966) - Patrick SüskindPatrick SüskindPatrick Süskind is a German writer and screenwriter.- Life and work :The public knows little about Patrick Süskind. He has withdrawn from the literary scene in Germany and never grants interviews or allows photos. He was born in Ambach am Starnberger See, near Munich in Germany...
- Perfume (1985) - Kurt VonnegutKurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
- Cat's CradleCat's CradleCat's Cradle is the fourth novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1963. It explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way...
(1963) - Luke Rhinehart - The Dice ManThe Dice ManThe Dice Man is a novel published in 1971 by George Cockcroft under the pen name Luke Rhinehart and tells the story of a psychiatrist who begins making life decisions based on the casting of dice. Cockcroft wrote the book based on his own experiences of using dice to make decisions while studying...
(1971) - Ray Fracalossy - Tales From the Vinegar Wasteland (2006)
See also
- AbsurdismAbsurdismIn philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
- Absurdist humor
- ExistentialismExistentialismExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
- Literary nonsenseLiterary nonsenseLiterary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning...
- Theatre of the AbsurdTheatre of the AbsurdThe Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...
- List of genres