ᴀᴛᴍᴏsᴘʜᴇʀɪᴄ ᴄᴏɴᴅɪᴛɪᴏɴs ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ 1960s

                22 - 24

major influences on Stoppard as a playwright:

Pirandello, Beckett

sixties:

Birmingham, AL campaign with MLK

assassination of JFK in 1963

Acid Test runs in CA by Ken Kesey and Merry Pranksters

protests against Vietnam War

fifties:

white suburb men in flannel suits, heading to Madison 

Avenue complacent with status quo, 2 cars every garage

1954 - Brown vs. Board of Education

1955 - lunch counter sit in at Reed's Drug Store in

Baltimore, ML

forties and fifties:

writers of Beat generation (precursors to bohemian, hippie

San Francisco)

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     Influence of Freudian
            Analysis and
           Existentialism

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two major strains of thought:

Freudian analysis: expose to analyze elements of subconscious,

such as motives to conscious behaviors

peak in cosmopolitan centers in 1960s

Freud's influence: characters revealed by linguistic slips, jokes,

riddles, non sequiturs

existentialism - currency in bohemian cultures and art world of 

60s, theoretical foundation published long before then

extends back into 19c, to Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard,

developed in early 20c

Jean-Paul Sartre's works emerged in 30s - 40s, including

existential play No Exit (1944) and long treatise on existentialism

Being and Nothingness (1943)

existentialism gain popularity in postwar era outside of philosophy

public friendship and disputes between Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone

de Beauvoir, Albert Camus in France reported in popular press

18c - notion that king and country is the pillar of one's reason to

live question by revolutions against UK and French monarchies

French Revolution - put individuals at center of own existence

Nationalism - persisted but was challenged

17/18c - acceptance of God as supreme challenged by science

and Darwin's theory of evolution, biological and cosmic system

20c - modernism and postmodernism diminish trust in human's

moral and ethical goodness

philosophy turned to humanity itself to find meaning

basic formulation in existential thought: human beings have

no essential value, one must create meaning for oneself

Friedrich Nietsche - critique against the herd, in favor of

Ubermensch (Superman)

individuals responsible for own actions and authencity

defined by Sartre and Camus as being for others (acting 

in a way that assures greater common good)

Camus agree universe is indifferent to fate, relationship 

between humanity and universe marked bu absurdity

one must act as if it were not so

embrace engagement - willful self definition that allows one to

act in the best interests of others in the world

existentialism is not nihilism, start with despairing notion that

universe is meaningless, but gives humans agency to give

meaning to their own existence, even if it's an illusion

Camus reimagined Sisyphus, punished by Zeus to push a

boulder up a mountain only to have it roll down

Sisyphus - willing to put his entire being into the task

Ros and Guil - no way to address their absurd situation

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    Theater of the Absurd

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Theater of the Absurd - suspends laws of physics, constancy

of identity, meaning of words, predictability of human response

unlike our world, but recognizable

distinct from philosophical system of existentialism

in Tom Stoppard and the Theater of the Absurd, Victor L.

Cahn describe Satre and Camus's fiction as tragic heroic,

as protagonists battle meaninglessness of existence

absurdist playwrights:

Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett

are comic pathetic, helpless victims of their meaninglessness

in seminal work on Theater of Absurd, Martin Esslin declare

Theater of Absurd merely presents absurdity of human condition