Modern Literature: Existentialism Essay, Research Paper

Existentialism

Existentialism is a philosophical motion that developed in Continental Europe during the 1800? s and 1900? s. Most of the members are interested in the nature of being or being, by which they normally mean human being. Although the philosophers by and large considered to be existential philosophers frequently disagree with each other and sometimes even resent being classified together, they have been grouped together because they portion many jobs, involvements, and thoughts.

The most outstanding existential philosopher minds of the 1900? s include the Gallic authors Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sarte, and Gabriel Marcel and German philosophers Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger. The Russian spiritual and political mind Nicolas Berdyaev and the Judaic philosopher Martin Buber were besides celebrated existential philosophers.

Existentialism is mostly a rebellion against traditional European doctrine which reached its flood tide during the late 1700? s and early 1800? s. Principles of cognition that would be nonsubjective, universally true, and certain were produced. Existentialists rejected the methods and ideals of scientific discipline as being improper for doctrine. They investigated what it is like to be an single homo being life in the universe alternatively of doing the traditional effort to hold on the ultimate nature of the universe and abstract systems of idea. They stress the fact that every person is merely a limited human being. Each must confront of import and hard determinations with merely limited cognition and clip in which to do these determinations.

Human life is seen as a series of determinations that must be made without cognizing what the right pick is. They must make up one’s mind what criterions to demur and which 1s to reject. Persons must do their ain picks without aid from external criterions. Worlds are free and wholly responsible for their picks. Their freedom and duty is thrust upon them and they are? condemned to be free? . Their duty for actions, determinations and beliefs cause anxiousness. They try to get away by disregarding or denying their duty. To hold a meaningful life one must go to the full cognizant of the true character of the state of affairs and courageously accept it.

Existentialists believe that people learn about themselves best by analyzing the most utmost signifiers of human experience. They write about such subjects as decease and utmost state of affairss. This concentration upon the most utmost and emotional facets of experience contrasts aggressively with the chief accent of modern-day doctrine in England and the United States. This doctrine focuses upon more common topographic point state of affairs and upon the nature of linguistic communication instead than experience.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Jean-Paul Sarte was born in Paris in 1905, and died in 1980. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. However he refused to accept the wages.

Sarte was a Gallic existential philosopher philosopher who expressed his thoughts in novels, dramas, and short narratives, every bit good as theoretical plants. The mere being of things, particularly his ain being, fascinated and horrified him. To Sarte there seemed no ground why anything exists. He stated that merely human being is witting of itself and of other things. He argued that inanimate objects merely are what they are and people are whatever they choose to be. Peoples exist as existences who must take their ain character. He agreed with the existential philosophers philosophy that people are wholly free. Sarte said, ? Peoples are afraid to acknowledge this freedom and to accept full duty for their behavior. ? Throughout his philosophical and literary plants, he examined and analyzed the varied and elusive signifiers of self-deceit.

In Sarte? s main philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, he investigated the nature and signifiers of being or being. In his essay, Existentialism and Humanism, he defined existential philosophy as the philosophy that, for world, ? being precedes kernel? . In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sarte presented his political and sociological theories.

Theater OF THE ABSURD MOVEMENT

The theatre of the absurd refers to inclinations in dramatic literature that emerged in Paris during the late 1940 & # 8217 ; s? s and early 1950? s. It? s roots can be found in the allegorical morality dramas of the in-between ages and the allegorical spiritual play. The term theatre of the absurd derives from the philosophical usage of the word absurd by such existential philosophers minds as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sarte. A to the full fulfilling rational account of the existence was beyond its range and the universe must be seen as absurd. The images of the theatre of the absurd tend to presume the quality of phantasy, dream, and incubus.

The theatre of the absurd motion heightened people in abstract state of affairss. It was enlightening and overall made the audience think. Its intent is to arouse thought with laughter. Theater of the absurd does non remain in cardinal and is sometimes described as loony. It ever has intense minutes, does non look like conventional theatre, and has no start, no center and no terminal.

SAMUEL BECKETT

Samuel Beckett was born in Foxrock, Ireland in 1906. He attended Trinity College in Dublin and left for Paris when he was 22. Throughout his life he wrote in both English and Gallic, but most of his major plants were written in French. Beckett was awarded the Nobel award for literature in 1969. He died in Paris in 1989. Beckett? s plants are explored in novels, short narratives, poesy, and books for wireless, telecasting, and movie. He is best known for his work in the theatre. His most celebrated drama Waiting for Godot became one of the most dramatic plants in this century. The unusual ambiance of Godot, in which two hobos wait on what appears to be a bare route for a adult male who ne’er arrives. This made his audience come back to see other major plants. Beckett? s drachms are most closely associated with the Theater of the Absurd. He has a minimalistic attack, depriving the phase of unneeded eyeglassess and characters. His works cover much of the same land as World War II Gallic existential philosophers.

Wait FOR GODOT

Waiting for Godot captures the experiencing the universe has no evident significance. In this misunderstood chef-d’oeuvre Beckett asserts legion existential philosopher subjects. Beckett believed that being is determined by opportunity. This is the first basic existential philosopher subject asserted. The drama consists of four vulgar characters, and in a simple manner who twice arrives with a message from Godot, a bare tree, a hill or two of Earth and a sky. Two of the characters are waiting for Godot who ne’er arrives. Two of them consist of a showy Godhead of the Earth and a broken slave whimpering and staggering at the terminal of a rope. It is about certain

that Godot stands for God and those who are lounging by the shriveled tree are for redemption, which ne’er comes. Many critics have agreed that Godot does non necessarly mean God, simply? the aim of our waiting- an event, a thing, a individual, a decease. ?

Another basic existential philosopher subject on which Beckett reflects is the nonsense of clip. Because past, present and future mean nil, the drama follows a cyclic form. Vladimir and Estragon returned to the same topographic point each twenty-four hours to wait for Godot and encounter the same basic people each twenty-four hours. Godot? s courier does non acknowledge Vladimir and Estragon from twenty-four hours to twenty-four hours. This suggests that the people we meet today are non the same as they were yesterday and will non be the same tomorrow.

Beckett besides examines a subject of self-deceptive efforts to dodge world by doing alibis for one? s actions. Vladimir and Estragon fool themselves by prosecuting in junior-grade discourse that reflects the absurdness of life. They even contemplate suicide legion times for legion grounds, but finally persist in the futility of life.

TOM STOPPARD

Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia on July 3, 1937, the boy of Eugene Straussler, a physician employed by Bata, the shoe makers. In 1942, his household moved to Singapore. He and his female parent evacuated to India with his brother before the Nipponese invasion. His male parent was left behind and killed. He so went to a multi-racial English talking school in Darjeeling, India. His female parent subsequently married Kenneth Stoppard, who was in the British ground forces in India. Stoppard was educated in a prep school at Nottingham Shire, and a grammar school in Yorkshire. He was so employed by Western Daily Press in Bristol, were he lived. There he was a intelligence newsman, characteristic author, theatre critic, movie critic and gossip editorialist. Finally he married Jose Ingle. He wrote such plants as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, a one-act drama in poetry. He besides wrote Rosecrantz and Guilenstern Are Dead. He won the John Whiting award and Evening Standard award in 1967.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD

Rosencrantz creates a image of characters who inhabit a universe which is stranger than they had supposed, which they know it is non as it seems but what it is. He evokes the ability of all adult male sort to understand those forces finally in control of their lives and destinies. Because Rosencrantz? s and Guildenstern? s destiny is determined by Hamlet and non by random forces.

At beginning of the drama, Rosencrantz remains unmindful to any oddness and their coin-tossing, depicting the unlikely tally as 85 caputs as simply a new record. The fate which awaits Rosencrantz and Guildenstern consists of nil for which they are prepared. Alternatively they are to be? maintain intrigued without of all time being enlightened? . The intent of the coin-tossing scene is the obvious decision that forces beyond their control are steering their destiny and it is obvious Guildenstern is more witting of the two. He besides sets up the quest subject that the drama will take on. The harangue and ramblings of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are reminiscent of the religious pilgrim of the supporter of Waiting for Godot. They both spend the full drama seeking for a destiny and religious principle that is ever touching them. It can be concluded that the rubric characters are seeking for a deity that will do itself apparent.

Irony comes to suit in the model of the drama because we know that the brace are to free their caputs. The wit of this state of affairs is a game of inquiries where they? reply? every inquiry with another inquiry, but truly recognize how the game is mirroring their quandary, which is to populate a universe full of inquiries which, for them, have no replies. For every action they partake in order to reply their naming, they are met with a hundred more inquiries, and In this lies the sarcasm of the full production.

T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot ( 1888-1965 ) was born in St.Louis, Missouri and graduated from Harvard. He lived in England for most of his life, returning to the United States sporadically to talk and Teach at Harvard and other universities. Eliot achieved the comprehensiveness of his poetic look in The Waste Land and other verse forms on this recording. In 1948 he was awarded a Nobel Prize. Eliot ranks among the most of import poets of the 1900? s. He departed radically from the techniques and capable affair of pre-World War I poetry. His poesy, along with his critical plants, helped to reshape modern literature. Many of Eliot? s positions on literature appeared in The Criterion, a literary magazine he edited from 1922 to 1939. Eliot served as a manager of a London Publishing house from 1925 until his decease. Eliot besides received the Order of Merit for literature during his life-time. He eventually found felicity in his 2nd matrimony which took topographic point eight old ages before his decease on January 4, 1965.

Two of import factors in Eliot? s development as a poet were his debut to Gallic symbolist poesy and his friendly relationship with fellow American Ezra Pound. It was in Pound that Eliot found a devoted wise man and a sensitive critic of the early bill of exchange of his verse forms. With Pound? s aid, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was published in

Poetry in 1915 and Preludes in Blast that same year- therefore establishing Eliot into the thick of literary modernism.

Eliot? s foremost major verse form, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, revealed his original and extremely developed manner. The verse form shows the influence of certain Gallic poets of the 1800? s, but its startling leaps from rhetorical linguistic communication to cliche, its indirect literary mentions, and its coincident wit and pessimism were rather new in English literature.

THE WASTE LAND

The Waste Land has become the verse form of the 20th century. The verse form offers an epochal penetration into the modern universe, the urban blight, of decease and devastation, of nonmeaningful relationships, and of a profound absence of religious, societal, and cultural confidences. It is presented with a series of allusions, fragments of texts and paperss, because Eliot wants the reader to see that sense of atomization for themselves through a sort of montage technique. There are glances of a sense of underlying order and integrity expressed throughout this literary chef-d’oeuvre.

Eliot suggests that the verse form draws upon the powerful myth of the hurt male monarch who must be restored to wellness before his lands can be returned to wholeness and birthrate one time more. Eliot besides suggests that, deep within the cultural unconscious of our modern barren, there are underlying forms and a sense of continuity. This verse form has mentions to old imperiums and civilizations such as Rome, Alexandria, and Vienna. The Waste Land is widely regarded as loose or impressionistic.

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