The Theatre of the Absurd icon: Edward Albee’s Juxtaposition of Abstract Symbolism to Existential realism in Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf?

Abstract

Abstract: Among the diverse literary dramatic forms, the theatre of the absurd inhabits and characterizes the intellectual European literature since the fifteenth century, starting from Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Praise of Madness (1511). Then, it was the threshold of a period when man trusts his reason more and more to know himself and to know the world, as well as to justify his faith; ironically, a room for the absurd was made, to defuse all tranquil certainties and dogmatisms founded on the logic of appearances. The concept of absurdism judiciously flourished and made an eminent association with abstract symbolism, which starting from the 19th century, takes the form of decadentist - aestheticized despair of an ending world - but then finds its truth in the search for a reality which favors interior sensation, the subjective, the unconscious, ephemeral, and the dream. This paper, then, will try to show how both absurdism and symbolism phenomena are founded and involved in the writing of tragedians namely Edward Albee in “who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?” the American classic. This genre of plays leaves the audience systematically confused as it echoes on the one hand the absurdity of family society life in all of its banality and darkness and denial of reality. On the other hand, it symbolizes the conflict between reality and illusion. Here, we see the combination of an absurd current and a symbolic / realist one as a species specific postmodern drama. The first is marked by the absurd eccentricity of characters Martha & George. The second takes the integrated symbolic form juxtaposed to realism by revolting against the absurd. Keywords: the absurd, abstract symbolism, realism, illusion, family life.