A Textual Approach to the study of Absurd Narration

This paper will examine a set of linguistic parameters which contribute to explaining the absurd creation by focusing on some possibilities of textual organization. It will be shown that the absurd narration is inspired by the concepts of connexity, sequantility and cohesion, namely by discontinuous and incongruent language use, elliptical narrative structure or the lack of sufficient information. Our combined literary and linguistic analysis is outlined on absurdist fictions like Camus’s L’Étranger, Michaux’s prose poems (La jetée and Un homme perdu) and Ionesco’s micro-fictions taken out of La cantatrice chauve.

A Textual Approach to the study of Absurd Narration

This paper will examine a set of linguistic parameters which contribute to explaining the absurd creation by focusing on some possibilities of textual organization. It will be shown that the absurd narration is inspired by the concepts of connexity, sequantility and cohesion, namely by discontinuous and incongruent language use, elliptical narrative structure or the lack of sufficient information. Our combined literary and linguistic analysis is outlined on absurdist fictions like Camus’s L’Étranger, Michaux’s prose poems (La jetée and Un homme perdu) and Ionesco’s micro-fictions taken out of La cantatrice chauve.