[By accentuating and accelerating the disjointedness of character, setting and situation] the theater of the absurd turned the professor into a central figure for the representation of man's condition in the modern world, in a way neither Mr. Chips nor his cousins, Molière's Docteurs, could have represented it.

Ionesco's Professor [in La Leçon is] … obviously steeped in the tradition of the stage professor, a tradition which for both its comic and tragic effects supposes a link with everyday life and reality. This link survives, though it has become extremely tenuous, and though the figures on stage now seem to re-enact everyday nightmare in patterns that are as unlife-like as possible, yet more compelling than ever for all involved. Overcoming the grotesque distortion of displacement and acceleration, this new professor holds the center of the stage and shows disturbing marks of kinship with the more heroic figures...