In this article Myfanwy Miles Jones analyses Büchner’s portrayal of the central character’s developing psychosis in the light of R. D. Laing’s existential psychiatric theory. Observing the progressive nature of Büchner’s dramatisation of the depth and coplexity of the human mind in turn reveals the formal limitations of drama in the Nineteenth Century. Setting Woyczeck in the context of Szondi’s formal analysis of modern drama, the article argues that Büchner’s treatment of madness casts new light on the formal development of modernist drama and argues that the fact that the play is unfinished is an inevitable consequence of the project itself, given that the formal resolution of the dramatic situation required the existence of conditions which had not at that time come into being.
Woyzeck Büchner, Peter Szondi and the crisis of drama
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