Edward Albee Plays Absurdity And Realism Tradition

Edward Albee is regarded as the greatest playwright in American drama after Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, many of whose plays have been listed among the American classics.Many critics recognize Albee as one of the dramatists of the Theatre of the Absurd. Indeed, the techniques employed in Albee's works are characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd, but the fact of the matter is that Albee's themes these techniques help to expose are typically of American realistic drama __ to criticize the society demoniacally. As we know, the theme is the core and life of a composition, so we can say Albee is basically a realistic playwright keeping up the American drama tradition.Taking The Zoo Story, The American Dream, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as examples, the writer of the thesis will analyze the absurdity and realism in Edward Albee's plays, that is, the techniques of the Theatre of the Absurd employed by Albee and his social criticism themes of realistic drama. There're five parts in the thesis: Introduction summaries Albee's life and works and a literature review; Chapter one mainly introduces the tradition of social criticism of American realistic drama and the characteristics of the Theatre of the Absurd; Chapter two analyzes in detail the techniques of the Theatre of the Absurd employed in Albee's works in terms of plots, characters, language, symbolism and tragicomedy, and then inquires into the cognitive significance of these techniques; Chapter three interprets at length the social criticism themes of realistic drama exposed in the three plays by employing the Absurd techniques; the last part comes to the Conclusion that Edward Albee is essentially a realistic playwright who is influenced by the Theatre of the Absurd.