“Artaud: A New Type of Magic,” in Yale French Studies, No. 31, 1964, pp. 87-98.

In the following essay, Knapp interprets several works of Artaud, arguing that they represent his medium for expressing and transforming the sick and sordid aspects of the human psyche.

As actor, director, poet, scenario writer or art critic, in whatever field of endeavor Antonin Artaud¹ chose to express himself, he sought to penetrate deep within man's unconscious into what became known as “the world of sur-reality.” He wanted to extract from it and materialize those painful and frightening thoughts and clusters of sensations which man wants to conceal from himself or hesitates to confront. Dreams, hallucinations, magic and alchemy were the instruments Artaud used to effect such revelation.

It was as a theoretician of the theatre that Artaud made his singular contribution, influencing a whole generation of writers. Artaud advocated a “theatre of cruelty,” where...