The dramatic form’s breakdown was driven by growing individual isolation.

Evidence

In sample analyses of plays from Ibsen to Arthur Miller, Szondi, then twenty-five years old, showed how the contradiction between dramatic form and epic subject-matter and between a frame based on dialogic communication and the growing problem of the isolation of individuals ultimately led to a new principle of form in drama. The changed subject-matter of the present daythis was the lesson of Szondi’s dialectical and phenomenological analysisguided dramatists towards a new world of forms, quite independently of their judgement of the contemporary period, if they confronted it at all. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2237

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fragmented modern lives make people vulnerable to totalitarian demagoguery. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 261; Purely self-interested individuals collapse when organization and terror arrive — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 169

Broader Connections

• Fragmented modern lives make people vulnerable to totalitarian demagoguery. #corroborates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 261
• Purely self-interested individuals collapse when organization and terror arrive #corroborates (0.70) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 169