La Cantatrice chauve/La Leçon

Reference

Eugène Ionesco

Tamar March

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Heinle & Heinle Pub

Rhinocéros

International Thomson Publishing

The main character in this avant garde play is Berenger, who pays little heed when a rhinoceros first appears running past his town square. Everybody else is astounded at the time, but are truly horrified when the rhinoceros returns and kills a cat, an event that still has little effect on Berenger. The situation is dramatically altered later, when Berenger realizes that many of his acquaintances are turning into rhinoceroses without apparent reason. The play can be viewed as a metaphor for Nazism and its diffusion in Germany, a result of Ionesco's experiences with the Nazis. However, the main themes are the rise of totalitarism and the dehumanization of those that succumb to conformity. "Le rhinoceros" was considered a dangerous play by more than one government, including that of the USSR which didn't allow it to be produced because Ionesco refused to say that the rhinoceroses represented the Nazis specifically, and not another totalitarian regime such as that of the Soviet Union. Euguene Ionesco (1912-1994) was born in Romania, but lived a great part of his life in France. He was an important exponent of what became known as "the Theatre of Absurd", a form of avant garde theater that was born in the 1950s and that includes works by Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter.

Rhinoceros (in French) (French Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

French & European Pubns

From the Publisher\nThis product is not a traditionally bound book. Many ProQuest UMI products are black-and-white reproductions of original publications produced through the Books On Demand ® program. Alternately, this product may be a photocopy of a dissertation or it may be a collection reproduced on microfiche or microfilm if it is intended for library purchase.

Notes and Counter Notes: Writings on the Theatre

University Microfilms International]

The author of such modern classics as The Bald Soprano, Exit the King, Rhinoceros, and The Chairs, Eugène Ionesco is one of the most important and influential figures in the modern theater” (Library Journal). This crucial collection combines The New Tenant with Amédée and Victims of Dutythe plays Richard Gilman has called, along with The Killer, Ionesco’s greatest plays, works of the same solidity, fulness, and permanence as [those of] his predecessors in the dramatic revolution that began with Ibsen and is still going on.”In Amédée, the title character and his wife have a problemnot so much the corpse in their bedroom as the fact that it’s been there for fifteen years and is now growing, slowly but surely crowding them out of their apartment.In The New Tenant a similar crowding is caused by an excess of furnitureas Harold Hobson said in the London Times, there is not dramatist . . . who can make furniture speak as eloquently as Ionesco, and here he makes it the perfect, the terrifying symbol of the deranged mind.”In Victims of Duty, Ionesco parodies the conformity of modern life by plunging his characters into an obscure search for Mallot with a t.” In these as in all his plays, Ionesco poses and solves his tragicomic dilemmas with the brilliant blend of gravity and hilarity that is the hallmark of the absurdist theater.

Amedee, The New Tenant, Victims of Duty

GROVE PRESS

Exit the King

Killing Game, A Play by Eugene Ionseco, translated from the French by Helen Gary Bishop. Paperback.

Killing Game

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

Grove/Atlantic

Solitaire, Le (Heinemann French texts)

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Heinemann Educational Publishers

First produced in 1963 starring Alec Guinness and successfully revived to great acclaim on Broadway in 2009, this absurdist exploration of ego and mortality is set in the crumbling throne-room of the palace in an unnamed country where King Berenger the First has only the duration of the play to live.|3 women, 3 men

Samuel. French

The sublime is confused with the ridiculous in this savage commentary on the human condition, a staple of every theatre classroom and 20th century drama. A small town is besieged by one roaring citizen who becomes a rhinoceros and proceeds to trample on the social order. As more citizens are transformed into rhinoceroses, the trampling becomes overwhelming, and more and more citizens become rhinoceroses. One sane man, Berenger, remains, unable to change his form and identity.

Rhinoceros: A Play in Three Acts

Concord Theatricals

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Books by Eugène Ionesco