The “absurd”, according to Chris Baldick’s The Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms (OUP, 1990), is “a term derived from the existentialism of Albert Camus, and often applied to the modern sense of human purposelessness in a universe without meaning or value”. Baldick goes on to single out the works of Kafka, and to stress the “theatre of the absurd” phenomenon, highlighting Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Indeed, it is largely through Theatre of the Absurd, and in particular Martin Esslin’s study bearing that title (first published in 1961) that the “absurd”, as a label, has achieved widespread currency through the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the citing here of the names of …
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Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "Absurd, Prose". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 February 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=11, accessed 21 November 2024.]
