SOURCE: “Peter Handke and the End of the ‘Modern,’” in Modern Drama, Vol. XXII, No. 4, January, 1981, pp. 346-66.

In the following essay, Hays examines the theoretical and aesthetic principles governing Handke's critical perspectives and dramatic works, particularly his effort to subvert the conventions of modern drama. According to Hays, “Handke's goal is to make art out of artifice while revealing the artifice of that art.”

In order fully to understand Peter Handke's contribution to modern European drama, one needs not only to locate his work in relation to that of other contemporary playwrights (this has been done often enough), but also to come to grips with the fact that Handke is a serious literary critic and theoretician whose dramaturgy springs more from his desire to expose the ideological substance of drama and criticism than it does from a desire to author works which follow in the tradition of...