Principles of Characters Construction in the European Theatre of Absurd and Russian Drama of the 1930s–1950s

Abstract

The article examines the principles of character construction in the dramaturgy of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky in comparison with the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. The aim of the study is to identify the common artistic foundations underlying the formation of characters in the poetics of the Oberiu movement and the European Theatre of the Absurd. The analysis focuses on the principles of depersonalization, conventionality and schematization of the character, antinomy, behavioral and speech paradox, as well as alogism as a structural element of the artistic world. It is demonstrated that the destruction of causal relationships manifests itself both at the level of speech organization and in the plot-compositional structure of the text.