Modern Drama

This course focuses on the development of late 19th and 20th century drama starting from Ibsen and
Shaw to Osborne, Beckett and Pinter. It handles issues related to aspects of Modernism marked by the
degeneration of Western ideals into an irretrievable mirage, marked by a series of shocks and moral
setbacks instigated by the 1st and 2nd World Wars. The course offers a wide mattress starting with the
optimism of the social plays of Shaw, through Osborne's Theatre of Anger, and ending with Beckett's
and Pinter's Theatre of the Absurd