Modern French Theater: 20th Century

A survey of 20th-century French theater through close readings of its key plays. Particular attention will be given to the conditions in which these plays were created, and especially to the changing intellectual climates and literary movements characterizing this period (surrealism, existentialism, the Absurd, for instance). Since plays are much shorter to read than novels, we will have plenty of time to examine these major ones chronologically:
1921- Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel, Jean Cocteau (surrealism)
1935- La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu, Jean Giraudoux (Greek tragedy: the come-back)
1938- Le Théâtre et son double (excerpts), Antonin Artaud (visionary theory)
1944- Huis clos, Jean-Paul Sartre (existentialism)
1950- La Cantatrice Chauve, Eugène Ionesco (theater of the absurd)
1969- Une Tempête, Aimé Césaire (« négritude » and anti-colonialism)
1981- Pour un oui ou pour un non, Nathalie Sarraute (language as lie)"