Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays) - Softcover

Alfred Jarry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486426874 ISBN 13: 9780486426877

Publisher: Dover Publications, 2003

Synopsis

When it first opened in Paris in late 1896, Ubu Roi immediately outraged audiences with its scatological references and surrealist style. Spectators rioted during the premiere (and final) performance and unrelenting controversy over the play's meaning followed. The quality and stunning impact of the work, however, was never questioned.
Early drafts of the play were written by Jarry in his teens to ridicule one of his teachers. The farce was done in the form of stylized burlesque, satirizing the tendency of the successful bourgeois to abuse his authority and become irresponsibly complacent. Ubu — the cruel, gluttonous, and grotesque main character (the author's metaphor for modern man) — anticipated characteristics of the Dada movement. In the 1920s, Dadaists and Surrealists championed the play, recognizing Ubu Roi as the first absurdist drama.

About this title

About the Author:

Barbara Wright has translated several Raymond Queneau novels; indeed, as John Updike wrote in The New Yorker, she "has waltzed around the floor with the Master so many times by now that she follows his quirky French as if the steps were in English." She has also translated works by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget, Nathalie Sarraute, and Marguerite Duras. She lives in London.

About the Author:

G. Legman started a short-lived Freudian quarterly, Neurotica, in the late 1940s. He wrote many books on the subject of erotica and sexual humor, including "The Limerick, The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore, Oragenitalism, " and "No Laughing Matter: Rationale of the Dirty Joke, Second Series." G. Legman died in 1999 in France.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0486426874
• ISBN 13: 9780486426877
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80