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THE LOGIC OF ILLOGIC: IONESCO'S VICTIMS OF DUTY UNIFYING THE APPARENTLY CHAOTIC ACTION of Eugene Ionesco's Victims of Duty is the discussion of draamtic the0fY that runs through it. Choubert discusses dramatic theory with Madeleine early in the play: All the plays that have ever been written, from Ancient Greece to the present day, have never been anything but thrillers. Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about. Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion. There's a riddle and it's solved in the final scene. Sometimes earlier. You seek, and then you find. Might as well give the game away at the start. (p. 119)1 Choubert has stated the premise of conventional drama: the exposition of a play formulates a single question which the rest of the play answers in a causal sequence-What is the cause of the plague at Thebes? How will the prince pull his father's murderer from the throne? It is no coincidence that immediately following Ionesco's condemnation of riddle-thrillers a detective enters with a riddle: Who is Mallot? And it is no coincidence that Nicolas, in a later section

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