In the wake of Ionesco's death in 1994, it is now possible to survey his oeuvre in its entirety. Gaensbauer's study examines, decade by decade, not only his dramatic works but also his early publications in Romania, his journals and personal essays, and even his painting. In viewing Ionesco's career as a continuous whole, Gaensbauer discovers that each work is essentially one piece of the long autobiography of a writer deeply engaged with a spiritual quest to understand himself and humanity.

Eugene Ioneso's dramas still work in theaters thanks to what some critics call his primordial sense of the foundations of drama. This text examines some of his work, including The Bald Soprano, The Lesson, The Chair, and Rhinoceros

The volume represents a selection of the articles which were presented at a colloquium on new research topics in aesthetics at the Austrian Library in Pilsen in September 2010. Their authors, Czech and Austrian scholars, address various topics, ranging from the institutional history of aesthetics to the relationship between philosophical aesthetics and psychology, and from the philosophy of literature to the aesthetics of fine arts, dramatic arts, and architecture.

This collection of essays aims to recapitulate the state of grotesque poetics in modern and post-modern writing. It concentrates on Central and Eastern Europe, introducing the Western reader to the variety and ingenuity of this region’s literary traditions, ranging from German and Russian to Lithuanian and Romanian literatures. At the same time, it seeks to highlight the importance of the grotesque mode of writing in the region. It includes new insights and interpretations of theories on grotesque and Menippean satire including (but not limited to) the works of Mikhail Bakhtin. The historic scope of the volume ranges from the legacies of Nazi dictatorship and exile to the post-communist times, but it is especially focused on the Soviet era. Scholars, not only from Central and Eastern Europe, but also from Great Britain, Ireland, and Turkey, analyze the literary devices of the grotesque, examining the relationship between the socio-political background and subversive representations of the grotesque. Many studies take on a comparative and transnational approach. Alternatively, some studies aim to present important and innovative creators of grotesque texts in greater detail. This book, which features, among others, contributions by Professor Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Chair of Queen Mary College at the University of London; Professor Alexander Ivanitsky of the Russian State University of Humanities; Professor Algis Kalėda of the Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore; Professor Peter Arnds of Trinity College, Dublin; and Dr Carmen Popescu of the University of Craiova, Romania, will appeal to a broad academic readership, including both students and professors wanting to discover more about the literary grotesque and modern Central and Eastern European literature and culture.

This volume is a collection of essays by Richard Wolin, a leading political theorist and intellectual historian. It is the follow up to Wolin’s two recent, widely acclaimed books: Heidegger’s Children and The Seduction of Unreason. In those books, he explored the legacy of Martin Heidegger and his impact on some of his most influential and notable students. He dealt particularly with the effect that Heidegger’s subsequent embrace of fascism and National Socialism had on these students. Delving further in his next book, Wolin explored the question of why philosophers and intellectuals have been drawn to antiliberal, antidemocratic fascism. The essays in this book are focused on European Political Thought particularly with figures associated with the Frankfurt School. The collection represents a virtual who’s who of European political thinkers with essays on Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse, Arendt, Heidegger, Weber, Jaspers, and Carl Schmitt. Moving beyond these thinkers and those books, this collection will also include essays on contemporary political issues such as post-communist revolutions, human rights, global democracy, the revival of republicanism, and religion and public life.

Born on 28 October 1903 to Arthur Waugh (1866-1943) and Catherine Charlotte Raban (1870-1954) Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (1903-1966), popularly known by his pen name Evelyn Waugh, wrote thirteen major novels apart from short stories, travelogues, essays, news stories and non-fiction. In the maze of his prolific writings, the quintessential Waugh often escaped the critical scrutiny of critics and reviewers, who often charged him with being a bitter critic of modern Britain, without presenting an alternative moral vision or else that his novels play up an untenable nostalgia for the aristocratic values of the feudal past and a pre-occupation with thrusting his religion on others. This book attempts to tear through the foggy veil of such critiques to revisit and redeem the real Waugh as represented in his creative works. The study argues that the claim of Evelyn Waugh to be recognised as a major twentieth century novelist in English literature rests on his creative use of comedy to convey his unique vision of life. The book highlights the centrality of the ubiquitous metaphor of the ever-revolving wheel of life to an understanding of his comic vision and art. The metaphor helps to define not just the division of this world into static, dynamic and religious characters, but also the weltanschauung that drives them to lead their lives in a particular way. Based on this, Waugh's novels are amenable to classification into lesser and greater comedies. The book argues that while the lesser comedies play up the absurdity of belief in the Enlightenment philosophy of progress, the greater comedies present the grandeur of life in the spiritual resurrection of the central characters.

The first collection of interdisciplinary and comparative studies focusing on diverse interactions among African, Asian, and Oceanic peoples and German colonizers

Even at the start of the new millennium the American Sixties continue to fascinate many scholars as one of the pivotal decades of the 20th Century. During those years the United States seemed to be strifing for new frontiers at home and abroad, driven by a generation of eager and idealistic young Americans: Civil Rights, Women's Liberation, Pop-Art, Flower Power, Postmodernism, Woodstock, the landing on the moon. Everything seemed possible. But the decade that had begun with the hopeful words of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. ended with the bloody nightmare of the Vietnam War, summers of violence in Northern black ghettos, and a rising tide of conservatism. To explore some of these contradictions, this collection of essays takes a fresh look at American's most turbulent years from a multidisciplinary perspective. Dealing with the Arts and Media, Literature and Society as well as History and Politics, the contributions offer a broad approach to a contemporary understanding of the Sixties and their legacy.

‘Schizo’: The Liberatory Potential of Madness presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the potential of madness as a force for liberation from societies of control.

This book explores the connection between politics and theatre by looking at the works and lives of Shaw, Brecht, Sartre, and Ionesco, providing a cultural history detailing the changing role of political theatre in twentieth-century Europe.