Introduction: New Tragedy and Comedy

Abstract

Serious twentieth-century French drama up to 1970 was mostly concerned with the harshest of realities, although realism and naturalism were technically on the decline. Feelings like loneliness, and fear in the face of torture, or death to be suffered or inflicted, were evoked in similar ways and circumstances to those Andre Malraux featured in his great novel of 1933, La Condition humaine (Man’s Fate). For already in the first half of this century, the fundamentals of living and dying were being thoroughly explored again, with an intensity of concern reminiscent of eighteenth-century philosophes or nineteenth-century poets with a zeal for reform, but with the difference that the debate was now regarded as a matter of greater and ever increasing urgency. Conflicts of values became predominant, particularly in the theatre, as implicit and even explicit suggestions were made as to how best to deal with metaphysical, social and political problems. Of course the world wars intensified the need that was felt for these ideas. The Occupation in the second one was particularly influential.