Leonce and Lena
by Georg Büchner
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"Georg Büchner's three surviving dramatic texts show the playwright wrestling with divergent styles in a struggle to convey his bleak worldview. ...Sean Graney reveal[s] much the same process. Both artists want to build on centuries-old theatrical traditions yet shred the niceties of conventional theater to expose life's raw nerves... ...Graney exploits his trademark techniques--stark design, inflated acting, self-reflexive presentation--to create an explosive, richly unpleasant affair.... show more Büchner poured every ounce of his cynicism into Prince Leonce, whose absurd battle with boredom fuels LEONCE UND LENA. Leonce can find nothing better to do with his days than spit on a rock 365 times in a row, convinced that human beings fall in love, marry, and multiply out of boredom, and finally they die out of boredom.' His childish father has betrothed him to the Princess Lena, a plan that will greatly interfere with Leonce's commitment to idleness.... Since Büchner is satirizing the theatrical conventions of his day, she's earnestly trying to become a fairy-tale princess, spouting poetic rhapsodies about flowers and dragonflies--while wrestling with the realization that there are people who are unhappy, incurably so, simply because they exist.' For this play Büchner drew heavily on the conventions of commedia dell'arte, then a nearly 300-year-old tradition of stock rustic characters in cartoonish, often ribald situations. Graney transforms the genre into menacing farce, inflating the characters' passions to such volatile extremes that they often quake as though ready to explode." Justin Hayford, The Chicago Reader show lessTags
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"Léonce et Léna" est une comédie écrite par Georg Büchner en 1836. La pièce raconte l'histoire de Léonce, prince du royaume de Popo, et Léna, princesse du royaume voisin de Pipi, qui sont tous deux contraints de se marier sans s'être jamais rencontrés. Insatisfaits de leur vie et réticents à l'idée d'un mariage arrangé, ils décident chacun de fuir leur destin.
En chemin, Léonce show more et Léna se rencontrent par hasard dans une auberge sans savoir qui est l'autre. Attirés l'un par l'autre, ils tombent amoureux, ignorant qu'ils sont en réalité les futurs mariés désignés par leurs parents. Cette situation ironique et les quiproquos qui s'ensuivent mettent en lumière les thèmes de la liberté individuelle, du destin, et de la quête de l'amour véritable.
Büchner, avec un mélange de satire et d'humour, critique les conventions sociales et politiques de son époque. "Léonce et Léna" est une œuvre qui se moque des structures de pouvoir et du caractère arbitraire des traditions, tout en offrant une réflexion sur la nature de l'amour et de la liberté. C'est une pièce pleine de vivacité, de poésie et de critiques sociales. show less
En chemin, Léonce show more et Léna se rencontrent par hasard dans une auberge sans savoir qui est l'autre. Attirés l'un par l'autre, ils tombent amoureux, ignorant qu'ils sont en réalité les futurs mariés désignés par leurs parents. Cette situation ironique et les quiproquos qui s'ensuivent mettent en lumière les thèmes de la liberté individuelle, du destin, et de la quête de l'amour véritable.
Büchner, avec un mélange de satire et d'humour, critique les conventions sociales et politiques de son époque. "Léonce et Léna" est une œuvre qui se moque des structures de pouvoir et du caractère arbitraire des traditions, tout en offrant une réflexion sur la nature de l'amour et de la liberté. C'est une pièce pleine de vivacité, de poésie et de critiques sociales. show less
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eorg Buchner, a German poet and dramatist, was born in Goddelau, Hesse, a former state of Germany, on October 17, 1813. He studied science and medicine at the Universities of Strasbourg and Giessen. Publication of a revolutionary pamphlet that he wrote forced Buchner to leave Giessen. He went on to study philosophy at Strasbourg and eventually show more became a lecturer on anatomy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Buchner's first play, Dantons Tod (Danton's Death), was a dramatic poem about the death of a French revolutionary hero. Leonce und Lena, a satire, and Woyzeck, the story of an army barber who kills his common-law wife, were not published until after his death. Woyzeck was published in 1879, and was the basis for Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, first performed in 1925. Buchner left the fragments of a novel, Lenz, which is the story of a poet who has much in common with Buchner himself. Buchner was rediscovered by the German expressionists in the twentieth century, who regarded him as a forerunner of the German expressionist movement. Buchner died of typhus on February 19, 1837. (Bowker Author Biography) The life of Georg Buchner was short, intense, and tragic-and significant for the development of modern drama. Buchner started a literary revolution that is continuing still. His three modern plays, Danton's Death (1835), Leonce and Lena (1850), and Woyzeck (1850), were greatly ahead of their time in their penetrating dramatic and psychological treatment. They served as an impetus for contemporary schools of drama as different as Ionesco's Theater of the Absurd and Brecht's Epic Theater. Buchner was particularly modern in his portrayal of isolated individuals, who often talk past one another. He was the first major dramatist to present events in an episodic manner and dispense with logically constructed plots. Alban Berg based the libretto of his opera Wozzeck on Woyzeck. Danton's Death, a powerful drama of the French Revolution. The opera like Woyzeck, is still popular. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Leonce and Lena
- Original title
- Leonce und Lena
- Original publication date
- 1838; 1963 (English edition with Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary) (English edition with Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary)
- People/Characters
- Prinz Leonce vom Reiche Popo; Prinzessin Lena vom Reiche Pipi
- Original language
- German
- Disambiguation notice
- This work is purely for texts of the single play Leonce and Lena. Please do not combine it with works which contain additional plays, or with study guides, commentaries, etc.
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Classifications
- Genre
- Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 832.6 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures German drama 1750–1832 : 18th century; classical period; romantic period
- LCC
- PT1828 .B6 .A7213 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures German literature Individual authors or works 1700-ca. 1860/70
- BISAC
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 21
- ASINs
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