Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-2018
Publication Title
PMLA
Volume
133
Issue
2
Pages
347-363
Abstract
Rereading Eugène Ionesco’s postwar play La cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano) in the light of the original, wartime Romanian version alongside archival materials concerning his political activity in Vichy France allows us to reconsider his role in the theater of the absurd. Instead of staging the emptiness of language in a conformist world, the Romanian play dramatizes how language and language exchange created meaning but also upheld state violence during the Second World War. Although the French version of the play adapts this theme to the postwar context, traces of state power over language remain. This new approach to a central text of the theater of the absurd invites us to reexamine the politics of language and language learning in wartime and postwar France.
Recommended Citation
Elsky, Julia. Rethinking Ionesco’s Absurd: The Bald Soprano in the Interlingual Context of Vichy and Postwar France. PMLA, 133, 2: 347-363, 2018. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works, http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2018.133.2.347
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Copyright Statement
© The Author 2018
Included in
Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Modern Literature Commons
Comments
Author Posting. © The Author 2018. This article is posted here by permission of the MLA for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in PMLA, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2018.133.2.347