Existential Principle in E. Albee’s Play “Three Tall Women”

Abstract

The paper deals with the study of the existential principle in Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Three Tall Women”. Similar to his early plays, the playwright portrays the false existence of man in the modern world. The play makes the reader think about the meaning of life and its last stages in particular. The purpose of the research is to determine the existential principle in the play “Three Tall Women” by the American playwright E. Albee. The paper focuses on the connection between the playwright’s poetics and the philosophy of existentialism in the choice of themes and problems for creative work. The researcher also demonstrates the play’s connection with the playwright’s early works written in the vein of existentialist aesthetics. Scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it is from the perspective of the play’s connection with the existentialist school of thought that the researcher approaches the study of “Three Tall Women”. As a result, the features connecting the play “Three Tall Women” with the existentialist school of thought have been identified.

References

1. Злобин Г. П. Современная драматургия США. М.: Высшая школа, 1968.
2. Олби Э. Не боюсь Вирджинии Вулф (Кто боится Вирджинии Вульф) / пер. Н. Волжина. М.: Прогресс, 1976.
3. Олби Э. Что случилось в зоопарке. 2021. URL: http://www.theatre-library.ru/authors/o/olby
4. Паверман В. М. Американская драматургия 60-х годов ХХ века: динамика художественной формы. Екатеринбург: Издательство Уральского университета, 2011.
5. Пави П. Словарь театра. М.: Прогресс, 1991.
6. Albee E. A Delicate Balance. N. Y.: Atheneum, 1966.
7. Albee E. The Zoo Story. N. Y.: Samuel French, 1959.
8. Albee E. Three Tall Women. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
9. Albee E. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Bristol: Penguin Books, 1971.
10. Bigsby C. W. E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Cambridge University Press, 1984. Vol. 2. Williams, Miller, Albee.
11. Bigsby C. W. E. Modern American Drama, 1945-2000. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
12. Romero R. E. Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women and Its Existential Background // Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos. 2004. Vol. 10. Iss. 86.
13. Roudane M. C. Edward Albee: A critical introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
14. Roudane M. C. Understanding Edward Albee. University of South Carolina, 1988.

Author information

About this article

Publication history

• Received: October 27, 2021.
• Published: December 28, 2021.

Keywords

• Э. Олби
• пьеса «Три высокие женщины»
• театр абсурда
• театр
• экзистенциализм
• E. Albee
• play “Three Tall Women”
• theatre of the absurd
• theatre
• existentialism

Copyright

© 2021 The Author(s)
© 2021 Gramota Publishing, LLC

User license

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)