Eugène Ionesco Summary

In the following essay, Ionesco sums up his reasons for writing, which include trying to recapture the paradisiacal light of his childhood and reveal it to others; communicating what he considers to b... Read more

In the following essay, Dukore analyzes The Bald Soprano and The Lesson to show that, contrary to Ionesco’s critics, his plays are not formless or meaningless, and explains that while his works... Read more

In the following essay, Sontag notes that Ionesco’s early work, in which he discovers and uses theatrically the poetry of clichés and language-as-thing, is interesting and original. Howe... Read more

In the following essay, Witt discusses the polar states such as evanescence and heaviness, lightness and darkness, open space and restriction, that are evident in Ionesco’s plays; notes his use... Read more

In the following essay, Newberry examines the development of Ionesco’s dramatic technique, especially in La Cantatrice Chauve, Les Chaises, and Le Roi se meurt, all of which, the critic conside... Read more

In the following essay, Brée studies three Ionesco plays from the 1960s, A Stroll in the Air, Exit the King, and Hunger and Thirst, in relation to his essays of the same period, and argu... Read more

In the following essay, Retford explores four categories of irony in The Lesson, The Bald Soprano, The Killer, and Victims of Duty, and asserts that Ionesco uses irony to reflect and world in flux and... Read more

In the following essay, an earlier version of which appeared in her volume, Ionesco: A Collection of Critical Essays published by Prentice Hall in 1973, Lamont explores the bizarre world of Ionesco&#x... Read more

Critical Essay by Dorothy Knowles When speaking of his dramatic writings, Ionesco has always insisted on their obsessional nature and … before the first performance of Rhinocéros in Par... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles I. Glicksberg Like Beckett, [Ionesco] does not take literature seriously, though he keeps on writing plays. He acknowledges his indebtedness to Kafka, who shared his obsessi... Read more

Critical Essay by Barry N. Schwartz It is disconcerting to experience the world on the stage, but in The Killer, it is there all the same. The atmosphere hovers over the action, a metaphysical cloud ... Read more

Critical Essay by Alexander Fischler [By accentuating and accelerating the disjointedness of character, setting and situation] the theater of the absurd turned the professor into a central figure for... Read more

[A three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Albee is an American playwright, scriptwriter, poet, and short story writer. In the following tribute, he remarks on how Ionesco influenced his approach to ... Read more

[Nemoianu is a Romanian-born American educator and critic. In the review below, he comments on Ionesco's concerns and literary method in Non.] Those who have marvelled at Ionesco's ra... Read more

[Brombert is an American educator and critic who specializes in nineteenth-century French literature. In the following review, he offers a mixed assessment of Ionesco's attack on Victor Hugo in... Read more

[A French-born American educator and critic, Lamont is the author of Ionesco (1973) and The Two Faces of Ionesco (1977). Below, she favorably assesses La quête intermittente.] Dedicated to h... Read more