absurdity

literature and philosophy

Learn about this topic in these articles:

Arabic dramatic literature

  • world distribution of Islam
    In Arabic literature: Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm

    …plays (and productions) was an Absurdist drama, Yā ṭāliʿ al-shajarah (1962; The Tree Climber), where the usage of the standard literary language in dialogue helped contribute to the “unreal” nature of the play’s dramatic logic. Al-Ḥakīm also wrote a few plays in the colloquial dialect of Egypt, but his most…

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existentialism

  • Søren Kierkegaard
    In existentialism: Ontic structure of human existence

    , on the absurdity of existence and of every possible project—as it does in Sartre, in Camus, and in atheistic existentialism; or it can lead toward the quest for a more direct relationship of existence with Being, beyond the constitutive possibilities of existence, so that Being reveals itself,…

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“Slaughterhouse-Five”

  • Kurt Vonnegut, c. 1965
    In Slaughterhouse-Five

    The absurdist, nonlinear work blends science fiction with historical facts, notably Vonnegut’s own experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, during the Allied firebombing of that city in early 1945. It is considered a modern-day classic.

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Theatre of the Absurd