SOURCE: Herrick, Jeffrey. “Peter Handke's Kaspar: A Study of Linguistic Theory in Modern Drama.” Philological Quarterly 63, no. 2 (spring 1984): 205-21.

In the following essay, Herrick discusses language and its limitations in Handke's Kaspar and gives a comparison to The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco.

Although considerable scholarly effort has recently been given to applying linguistic studies and theories to literary texts, especially in deconstruction, almost none has been given to examining literary works in which the creative use of linguistic theory plays a manifest role. Yet several modern European dramatists have clearly concerned themselves with linguistic theory in their plays. The overt use of linguistic theory in drama has largely been due, it seems, to the epistemological basis of much modern linguistic theorizing, since those modern dramatists who deal with linguistic questions generally have philosophical and psychological matters under study. This is nowhere more apparent than in Peter Handke's Kaspar...