 Welcome to my channel. I am yet again here with another interesting video on Theatre of Absurd, one of the most frequently asked literary group in UGC Net examination. I was going through the comment section and a lot of students asked me that one please make a video on literary movements because nowadays they are asking a lot of questions from these literary movements and then that struck me that why not I come up with a video on the topic Theatre of Absurd because nowadays if you look at literary movements and the questions asked from this particular section they are focusing most of the time on the major literary movement that happened during the modern and the post-modern period. They have shifted their emphasis from Renessa restoration to modern and post-modern writings. Now it is very important for a net aspirin to be aware of this change. If you're still preparing for writers like Shakespeare, John Donne, Thomas Carrey, I'm telling you you'll be feel left on the day of the exam but then you have to start focusing from this day onwards on the post-modern and modern writers which form the most important chunk of the question paper. So without any further delay let's jump right into the topic Theatre of Absurd and see what was Theatre of Absurd, how did it come up, who were the major writers and what were the major works written in this literary movement of Theatre of Absurd and I'm telling you that after you watch this video you'll have absolute wonderful idea of what this group was all about. So watch this video till the end and before we move forward I would like you to press the bell icon and also click on the subscribe button so that you never miss an update from my channel. So before we start looking at this literary movement, Theatre of Absurd, it is important to know who coined the term Theatre of Absurd. So yes, it was Martin Aslin who coined the term Theatre of Absurd and you must jot down this point because this is one of the most important points that might help you on the day of the exam. It has been asked many a times in the question paper. So Theatre of Absurd was a literary movement that began around 1950 and it continued till 1980s. So it was Samuel Beckett whose death in 1989 marks the close of this movement. So it was a movement which spread across America and a lot of European countries during 1950s and 60s and all the major dramatists that you would be reading during 1950s and 1960s are some or the other way closely related to Theatre of Absurd. So you name it and we have it Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Albert Elby, Eugene Enesco, all these major dramatists were a part of this movement. What is surprising about Theatre of Absurd is that Theatre of Absurd as a literary movement is closely linked to another literary movement known as Surrealism. Now you must be wondering what is Surrealism? Surrealism was a literary movement that came up after World War I as a reaction to World War I and it was a literary movement where we will find a lot of dream sequences. So these nightmarish dreams would be coming up in works of Surrealism. Also images from the unconscious plays a very important role in surrealistic works. So you will have images coming from the subconscious part of the mind and these images mostly are having sexual connotations. So this is a literary movement called Surrealism closely associated to Theatre of Absurd. Another interesting fact about Theatre of Absurd is that Theatre of Absurd was inspired by a work by Albert Kamu, the work that I think you must be aware of, Myth of Sisyphus, that was an essay written by him in 1942. And in that essay, Myth of Sisyphus, he gives the philosophy of Absurd. What does this philosophy of Absurd say? So according to Kamu, man is on a quest to understand life and this quest is having no meaning in its own. So the man quest for existence and to derive meaning for life is futile and is of no use at all. Also at the same time, the Myth of Sisyphus is interesting as an essay because it portrays a Greek mythological character called Sisyphus. Now this character, Sisyphus, he was condemned to an existence of rolling a ball to the top of the mountain and then the ball is going to come down again, roll down again and then he has to again carry the ball to the top of the mountain and this is how he'll be leading his entire life. You can see how futile this kind of existence is. You will achieve nothing at the end of your life even after making so much effort and working day in and day out. So that was Theatre of Absurd and its association to other literary movement. Now let's look at what gave rise to Theatre of Absurd and let's understand the political and economic conditions which led to this literary movement. If you look at the time frame when Theatre of Absurd began, it began around 1950s. The political event that happened just before the arrival of Theatre of Absurd was World War II. That catastrophic war in which 48 million people were killed. So many people suffered and if you look at the portrayal of World War II in the historic movies, you would find out that there was fear and doubts all around. It was an atmosphere of pessimism and negativity. So that was World War II which led rise to Theatre of Absurd because all these writers, even in the Hollywood movies that were made before World War II, there was this feeling of petrotism and hopefulness. But then as World War II began and people started seeing this mass killing, they figured out that this is all false. And those Hollywood movies of petrotism were replaced by another genre, a very dark genre that was known as Phil Neuer. So there was a transition in the mentality of people. People started looking at the degenerated state of traditional values and political values. Everything was shattered after World War II. And in this state of pessimism, extreme negativity started a literary movement in Theatre of Absurd which focused on absurdity as the major theme. If you look at the dictionary meaning of the word absurdity, you will figure out that absurdity means making no sense at all. Absurd plays or the plays related to Theatre of Absurd showed the existence as nonsensical and chaotic. You look at the play Rhinoceros, you will figure out that in that play there is a rhinoceros walking on stage. What kind of absurdity is it? A play centered around rhinoceros? That's completely nonsensical. That doesn't make sense at all. On the other hand, you will have plays of Herald Pinter where the characters are speaking gibberish. You cannot understand what they are uttering. The sentences are half-complete. So absurdity became the major and the predominant theme of all the plays which were considered to be the best-sellers in the list of Theatre of Absurd. Another important theme that formed the part of most of the Theatre of Absurd plays were Cruelty and Violence. Now cruelty and violence does not only mean that somebody is being killed, the act of cruelty and the act of violence was showcased in the way the characters speak to each other. So the dialogue also, the acts that they did onstage showed the kind of cruelty and violence that was ingrained in the people's life after post-world war. So if you look at the great play The Room by Herald Pinter, you will find that in that play a blind man is being beaten. That is cruel, right? On the other hand, there's Samuel Beckett in Endgame showcasing life of a character Ham. Now this character Ham says that I was treated with shrewd and cruelty by the hands of my own parents. So in the childhood of this character Ham, he says that I used to cry a lot and my parents used to leave me alone when I was crying. My father used to say that we let you cry so that we might sleep in peace. So see the kind of cruelty that was ingrained in the characters and their lives. So that was another important and dominant theme in the plays of Theatre of Absurd. Last but not the least, another dominant theme of almost all the plays which are a part of Theatre of Absurd group is lack of communication. So you will find that all these play reflect a theme that there's a possibility of effective communication. And my most favorite of all these plays is Zoo Story which reflects how people fail to communicate with each other. They are longing for communication. So in this Zoo Story, there's this man who is trying to communicate or have a conversation with a stranger. He is so eager to have this conversation that he's willing to die if he would not have a good communication. So see that desire, intense desire to communicate, to have a sense of longingness, to have a sense of bounding with other people, other fellow humans was so dominant in all the plays of Theatre of Absurd. So I think that by the means of this video, I was able to give you a glimpse of what Theatre of Absurd look like. There are so many other components of Theatre of Absurd and all other literary groups like surrealism, imagism, stream of consciousness novels. But then it's impossible to tackle all these ideas in just one video. I would really be happy if you can visit my website once and look at the module-wise syllabus that I have given to all my students who are preparing for UGC net English literature. In that module-wise syllabus, you will find a special module on literary terms and devices and also a separate module on literary movements. In that module, I have catered to give students all important literary groups along with all the important writers associated and the most important works associated with that group. So make sure you have a look at the list. The list is for free. If you want to join our online course, you can definitely go to the website and look for all the details or call on the number displayed above. So that's it for this video lecture. Before you leave, make sure you go to the description and read it. Also, you subscribe and follow me on all the other social media platforms so that you get notified about all the important updates for UGC net. So that's it for this video lecture. We'll meet very soon in the next video lecture. Till the time we meet next, happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpitakarva.com