The Play of Language in Ionesco's Play of Chairs

Abstract

If the twentieth century's concern with language and textuality could be summed up in one playwright, Eugene Ionesco would stand a very good chance of taking the distinction. Certainly, on the basis of three of his earliest plays, The Bald Soprano, The Lesson, and The Chairs, he can probably be considered the grandmaster of the metalinguistic play, for language not only forms the basis of his fictional worlds, but is held up to the light, examined, and displayed from quite a variety of angles. Although many of the linguistic concerns of The Bald Soprano and The Lesson can be recognized in the later play, The Chairs introduces a new level of complexity in what is said about language and how. The play foregrounds the problematics of language not only as discourse, but also as critical method, delving into a critique of its own ontological basis and the kind of dramatic discourse and dramatic world thus produced. Such an examination of language ends up generating critical implications for the nature of literature, both theatrical and narrative.