ABSTRACT
In Woyzeck Georg Buchner employs distinctive literal and figurative linguistic registers in which realist, ordinary language is counterbalanced by bizarre speeches and grotesquely violent behaviour and poetic images of the natural and the supernatural world, folksongs, fairy tales and quotations from the Bible. Woyzeck is Buchner’s final work in progress and widely considered to be the first modern drama in the history of European theatre. Its modernity is reflected in the play’s experimental form and in its socio-critical subject matter. When the Napoleonic wars in Europe finally came to an end in 1815, German society demanded social and political changes. Woyzeck’s language is as much literal and commonplace as it is symbolic and nightmarish. The idea of revolt in political and artistic practice also informed the works of the important expressionists Frank Wedekind, Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser. The play’s disjointed form and its socio-critical themes are essentially what makes Woyzeck a forerunner of modernist drama.
