ABSTRACT
Absurdity and Revolt are very closely linked in the ideal pattern. In his book The Theatre of Revolt Robert Brustein claims that the usual critical treatment–under the headings of Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism–disguises an essential unity in writers such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Brecht, Genet, and George Bernard Shaw. Gabriel Brunet has written of Alfred Jarry that his life seemed to have been directed by a philosophical concept: He offered himself as a victim to the derision and to the absurdity of the world. His life is a sort of humorous and ironic epic which is carried to the point of the voluntary, farcical and thorough destruction of the self. The movement of irrational theatre became more organized under Apollinaire, who was much influenced by Jarry and who began writing a ‘play’ called Les Mamelles de Tiresias in 1903–although it was not completed until 1917. Some critics frankly enjoyed themselves, but others were moved to righteous anger by the experiment.
