Early Works Of Edward Albee Comedy And Comedy Aesthetic

Edward Albee is the most shinning name of American theatre in1960s.Commonly acknowledged as a playwright of Theater of the Absurd, he is firstintroduced to China in early1960s, but only seven of his plays have been translatedinto Chinese. In China today, criticism alike is dotted on the seven-translated plays.The research perspective in this dissertation, the comic mechanism and the audience'sacceptance, is a very new access to his work.Any object can be taken as something comic when it is valued by differentsubjects from different angles in different places and times. And so can be a theatre.This dissertation is grounded on this law.Albee's plays (1958-1968), so closely related to European Theatre of the Absurdand American fictions of Black Humor, is, not by accident, a certain product ofAmerican literature and the comic tendency in these plays agrees the aestheticalstandard of that age.This dissertation explores the comic mechanism in Albee's plays and theaudience's acceptance in two parallel ways: its narration and personage, which arealways taken as two basic elements of a literature work by traditional literaturecriticism.Traditionally, the playwrights employ some narrative devices like intrigue,misunderstanding, coincidence, exaggeration, inversion and sudden-turn to producecomic effect. But in modern theatre, on one hand, with the conflicts calmed down andhidden from the stage show, the aesthetic acceptance is immune to the tragic effect; onthe other hand, the revival of grotesque brings about projecting comic effect. Fam andYam, a play of Albee's early achievements, with the together-work of the devices oftraditional comic narration and that of surrealism, makes very good comic effect. InThe Sandbox, a soft atmosphere is intentionally created for the death of Grandma; inThe Death of Bessie Smith, the dodge of the direct show of Bessie's bloody deathhelps to make the audience away from a tragedy. The fragmentary narration in TheZoo Story, The American Dream and A Delicate Balance indicates the relevancebetween Albee's plays and Theatre of the Absurd. The peculiarity of Albee's narrationlies in the willful inter-deviation of definite and indefinite narration. For one thing, thebasically needed elements for a story and the end of the story are definite; for another,the story develops in a way opposite to that such a story should always have followed,with the arbitary piling of irrelated information, which surprises the subject of the aesthetic acceptance and stirs laughter.Traditional and modern comic personages, based on different social facts andtheory backgrounds, play an active role in different comic mechanisms with differentsocial identities. But, inferior, free and heroic, they share the common features ofcomic personage. Albee's comic personages have these features, and also theiruniqueness. They speak dirty words in very poor logic and even thirst for thecome-back of man's animal nature. Without definite ideal for life, they boldly say"no" to the traditional expectation of their social identities, seek their own way toexceed the straight jacket of unlucky life and spiritually win at last. In this way, theyexpress very strong subjective intent and get detached from the images in Theatre ofthe Absurd.The research here needs furthering in two ways: some microcosmic problemsabout comedy should call for more attention; the macroscopic angle of the furtheringresearch should be launched out of the mixed field of text study and stage practice,and that of the playwright's writing and his artistic practice.