Cornwell N. The absurd in literature

Manchester University Press, 2006. — xiv+354 p. — ISBN: 978-0-7190-7409-7.Neil Cornwell's study, while endeavouring to present an historical survey of absurdist literature and its forbears, does not aspire to being an exhaustive history of absurdism. Rather, it pauses on certain historical moments, artistic movements, literary figures and selected works, before moving on to discuss four key writers: Daniil Kharms, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien.
The absurd in literature will be of compelling interest to a considerable range of students of comparative, European (including Russian and Central European) and English literatures (British Isles and American) - as well as those more concerned with theatre studies, the avant-garde and the history of ideas (including humour theory). It should also have a wide appeal to the enthusiastic general reader.
(перевод)
Исследование Нила Корнуэлла, пытаясь представить исторический обзор абсурдистской литературы и ее предков, не претендует на исчерпывающую историю абсурдизма. Скорее, он останавливается на определенных исторических моментах, художественных движениях, литературных деятелях и избранных произведениях, прежде чем перейти к обсуждению четырех ключевых писателей: Даниила Хармса, Франца Кафки, Сэмюэля Беккета и Фланна О'Брайена.
Абсурд в литературе будет интересен значительному кругу студентов сравнительной, европейской (в том числе русской и центральноевропейской) и английской литератур (британских островов и американской), а также тем, кто больше интересуется театроведением, авангардом и историей идей (включая теорию юмора). Книга также будет интересна широкому кругу читателей.AbbreviationsIntroductory
The theoretical absurd: an introduction
The philosophical absurd
Jokes, humour, nonsense and the absurd
The socio-linguistic absurd
Antecedents to the absurd
From the ancients
Madness: mysteries to Shakespeare
Nonsense, Swift and Sterne
Romantic grotesque to ‘higher’ realism and pre-Surrealist nonsenseGrowth of the absurd
The twentieth century: towards the absurd
Introductory pointers
‘Post-Impressionists’ in England
Avant-garde theory and practice
Disparate European prose: Western and Eastern proto-absurdism
Around the absurd I: twentieth-century absurdist practice
Fernando Pessoa and the ‘pessimistic absurd’
Antonin Artaud and the ‘cruelty’ of the absurd
Camus and the Dostoevsky connection
Around the absurd II: the Theatre of the Absurd
Ionesco and others: the French-language scene
Pinter and others: the English-language scene
The East European scene
(Soviet) Russia: the OBERIU
(Cold-War) Poland and CzechoslovakiaSpecial authors
Daniil Kharms as minimalist-absurdist
A Kharms sketch
The Kharmsian canon
A poetics of extremism
Logic of the black miniature
Pursuing the red-haired man
Kharmsian others?
Franz Kafka: otherness in the labyrinth of absurdity
Kafka and the other(s)
Kafka in the other(s)
Falling and cawing in the labyrinth
Samuel Beckett’s vessels, voices and shades of the absurd
In the wake of Kafka?
The prose
The drama
Further shades of the absurd
Flann O’Brien and the purloined absurd
The hydra-headed man
At Swim-Two-Birds: juvenile scrivenry as metafictional absurd?
The Third Policeman: questions, mysteries, answersIn conclusion
Beyond the absurd?
The prosaic absurd
Beyond the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’?
Popular culture
That miscellaneous and ubiquitous absurdBibliography
Index