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    A Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"
    A Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"
    A Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"
    Ebook39 pages23 minutes

    A Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 12, 2016
    ISBN9781535832076
    A Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" - Gale

      08

      Rhinoceros

      Eugène Ionesco

      1959

      Introduction

      In considering the entire body of Eugène Ionesco's writing, his full-length play Rhinoceros (1959) is recognized as the most fully articulated expression of his disgust with the tide of institutional and personal conformism that he saw as a rising force in the twentieth century. Adapted from a short story of the same name, the play was first staged in Dusseldorf in October, 1959, and it is also the play that brought Ionesco's work to a global audience, premiering in Paris in 1960 and at the Royal Court in London later the same year. (The first English production of Rhinoceros was directed by Orson Welles and starred Laurence Olivier.) But it was the 1961 Broadway production that starred Eli Wallach as Berenger and Zero Mostel as Jean that launched Ionesco to previously unimagined celebrity. With its warning of how anyone might possibly fall victim to the pressures of conformity, the play has sparked varied and passionate reactions. Some audiences have embraced the implications of the powerful social message while others have balked at what they see as the overt didacticism of the play.

      A recent edition of Rhinoceros was published by Penguin in 2000.

      Author Biography

      Eugène Ionesco was born Eugen Ionescu on November 26, 1909, in Slatina, Romania, to a Romanian father and a mother of French and Greek-Romanian heritage. Baptized as a Romanian Orthodox, Ionesco spent most of his childhood in France, living in Paris while his father continued his studies. Ionesco returned to Romania with his father in 1925 following his parents' divorce. He went on to study French Literature at the University of Bucharest (1928-1933).

      Ionesco married Rodica Burileanu in July 1936, and the two had a daughter, Marie-France, in August 1944. Returning to France in 1938 in order to complete his doctoral thesis, Ionesco and his family remained in Marseille during World War II. They returned to Paris in the mid-1940s, where Ionesco worked in publishing. His work during this period also included translating the works of Urmoz (1883-1923), a Romanian poet who is often considered an influential figure in surrealism and the literature of the absurd.

      Ionesco came to the theater relatively late in life,

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