Travesties Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 75 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Travesties.
Related Topics

Travesties Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 75 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Travesties.
This section contains 1,244 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Travesties Study Guide

Act 1

Most of the action in Travesties takes place in Zurich in 1917, during World War I, and focuses on three revolutionaries: the communist leader Lenin, the dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and the modernist writer James Joyce. Henry Can', a minor British official, relates the trio's actions and dialogue through his memories of that time period. Carr claims that he met Lenin at the Zurich library and Tzara and Joyce during a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The play is set in two locations: the Zurich Public Library, where the principle characters interact, and Carr's apartment in Zurich, where the now-elderly man recalls the past.

The dialogue focuses on the revolutionaries' politics and philosophies at a turning point in each man's life: Joyce's writing of his novel Ulysses, published in 1922; Tzara's creation of the principles of dada, a nihilistic movement in art and literature; and...

(read more)

This section contains 1,244 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Travesties Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Travesties from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.