Understanding Friedrich Dürrenmatt
By: Roger A. Crockett.
Series: Understanding modern European and Latin American literature
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 220
Subjects: Dürrenmatt, Friedrich -- Criticism and interpretation.
Description: This introductory volume explores the playwright's chaotic universe, where God has retreated beyond the stars and where blind chance is the real prime mover, justice is corruptible, ideologies useless, and tragedy no longer possible. Yet despite the overriding pessimism of Durrenmatt's Weltanschauung, the author argues that the playwright remains a genial master of comedy.

Through the laughter he allows his readers to see that all is not lost, that there are virtues worth fighting for, and that there are still courageous Don Quixotes worthy of the title "hero.".

Crockett contends that as a theorist of the modern German stage, Durrenmatt challenges Bertolt Brecht and offers alternatives. As a craftsman of prose fiction, he fashions the stout thread with which the readers enter his labyrinths and eventually find their way back out, while his literary Theseuses, clinging to gossamer strands, sometimes fall prey to the monster in the maze.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 204-214) and index.
Table of contents: title: Biography; title: Earliest prose and dramatic works; title: The turn to comedy; title: Three detective stories; title: Two plays about ideologies and God's remoteness; title: The radio plays; title: Consolation from Dürrenmatt; title: The corruption of justice; title: Of heroism, failure, and resignation; title: Improbable grace; title: The adaptations; title: Four that failed: the late plays; title: The prose of the 1970s and 1980s; title: Conclusion.