Samuel Beckett

Actuación de Billie Whitelaw en Not I de Samuel Beckett

by Florencia Campolonghi

Paper final para el Seminario "Samuel Beckett y la actuación" dictado por Laura Cerrato (UBA)

Beckett dirige a Whitelaw en la puesta de Not I que filmó la BBC.  Complicaciones del traslado del texto al... more Beckett dirige a Whitelaw en la puesta de Not I que filmó la BBC.  Complicaciones del traslado del texto al escenario. Aciertos y desaciertos en la versión protagonizada por Julianne Moore en el proyecto más contemporáneo, Beckett on Film. El ojo de la cámara y la mediación: la cuestión del teatro filmado

The “Preface” to Matthew Arnold’s Poems (1853): A Source for Waiting for Godot?

by John Flood

English Language Notes, 40:2 (2002), pp. 55-7

Nature Has Forgotten Us: Reactions to the Apocalypse in Beckett and The Road

by Lauren Baker

Similarities in the apocalyptic narrative of Beckett and McCarthy Similarities in the apocalyptic narrative of Beckett and McCarthy

Mounting Without Language: The Political Resistance To Signifier In Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language

by Arka Chattopadhyay

It's a paper I presented in my Post-grads days in JU on Harold Pinter's last play Mountain Language. It was meant to... more It's a paper I presented in my Post-grads days in JU on Harold Pinter's last play Mountain Language. It was meant to be a tribute to the playwright who had died that year only.

I upload it as a work in progress piece without a bibliography!

The paper seeks to analyze the political function of silence in Mountain Language not only in terms of the issue of the Kurdish language which is the political context for the composition of the play but also in terms of Pinter's complex response to and critique of realism. I refer to certain performances of the play too in order to further my point. Drawing on Beckett's insight into the torture mechanism, I try to bring out the autonomous outside to the process of torture that is constructed through a silence of resistance. It is also about resisting an imposed notion of liberty and Pinter's fascinating use of words that qualify and inform what I call his political resistance to the signifier. There are passing references to other Pinter plays, especially belonging to his last and overtly political period.

Theatrical Cartoon Comedy: From Animated Portmanteau to the risus purus

by Suzanne Buchan

Buchan, Suzanne, "Theatrical Cartoon Comedy: From Animated Portmanteau to the risus purus," in: Horton, Andrew and Joanna E Rapf (eds) A Companion to Film Comedy, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012 (forthcoming October), ISBN: 978-1-4443-3859-1

Becketts dialogiske de-sign. En analyse af COMPANY og WORSTWARD HO

by John Thobo-Carlsen

Published in Anker Gemzøe, Britta Timm Knudsen og Gorm Larsen (eds.): Metafiktion - selvrefleksionens retorik. Holte: Forlaget Medusa 2001

Becketts Dialogical 'De-sign' and Rhetoric of Impotence

by John Thobo-Carlsen

Published in Samuel Beckett Today/ Aujourd'hui, SAMUEL BECKETT: ENDLESS IN THE YEAR 2000/FIN SANS FIN EN L'AN 2000 edited by/édité par Angela Moorjani and/et Carola Veit, pp. 245-252(8). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

With the help of the term 'de-sign' I try to show that Beckett's Company and Worstward Ho are attempts to keep his... more With the help of the term 'de-sign' I try to show that Beckett's Company and Worstward Ho are attempts to keep his promise from Dream of Fair to Middling Women of writing a book "where the experience of my reader [...] shall be the menace, the miracle, the memory, of an unspeakable trajectory” (138). The article takes its starting point in Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism, which he sees as a clash between two or more linguistic consciousnesses fought on the territory of the utterance. In my analysis of these works I present a model of the dialogic transformations in Company that hopefully will enable us to position the subject-masks of the writing and reading instances on every diegetic level.

Forbidden Transformation: analysing the ambiguous identity of Joey Hateley by Michael Tatham

by Joey Hateley

MA Theatre Studies (Research Thesis), by Michael Angelo Tatham, University of Reading—2008

I began this project wanting to explore the concept of transgression and how it functioned and related to this... more I began this project wanting to explore the concept of transgression and how it functioned and related to this performer called Joey Hateley whose gender was difficult to decipher. The company name—TransAction—was for me principally about transgenderism and transgression within the space of theatre, and the focus of my research stemmed from a question hypothesized by Judith Butler in her highly influential text Gender Trouble: ‘what kind of [theatrical] performance will enact and reveal the performativity of gender itself in a way that destabilizes the naturalized categories of identity and desire [?]’ (Butler 1999: 177). I investigated the possibilities of theatrical impersonation and role-play in the transgression of gender norms and social boundaries. The connection between certain forms of theatrical performance and queer theories excited me, and I thought that what I had seen at The Drill Hall—Joey Hateley in a show about the mimicry and fluidity of gender behavior and appearance—called into question, or transgressed, hegemonic and heterosexist ideologies pertaining to identity and desire.

The focus changed, slightly, and despite originally setting out to measure and assess the degree of transgression, or the extent to which cultural boundaries had been violated and surpassed in specific instances of theatricality, I became instead more interested in some of the other words and ideas associated with ‘trans’. While transgressive acts in theatrical contexts—or what Jonathon Dollimore understands as ‘transgressive reinscriptions’—disrupt the dimorphic structure of gender, they might also equally reinforce the binary logic of that organizing principle (Dollimore 1991: 322-325). The notion of trans became more about transformation, transition, and transcendence. It felt more appropriate, more accurate even, to claim that Joey was not necessarily transgressing gender, but rather transforming—or expanding—the possibilities of gender as it is lived, constructed, displayed and perceived.

Joey, then, more than a transgressor, is seen in this dissertation as a theatrical transformer who transitions across, through, and in-between a multiplicity of constructed stage identities. The artistic projects by TransAction have opened up—for me and hopefully for many others—new perspectives and new understandings of what it means to live gender(s) and to do gender(s). In watching these exciting transformations—by analyzing this person’s shifting silhouettes—I also re-register my personal changes, consider my multiple others, and am in this sense enlightened, transformed, and yet still transforming. This focus in the work of TransAction, then, to recognize individual alterity, to question differentiation, to document potential social change, and to dream of transcendence is vital if, as Elizabeth Wilson writes, we are to ‘have an idea of how things could be different’ or better still for queer and/or marginalized identities:

In other words, transgression on its own leads eventually to entropy, unless we carry within us some idea of transformation. It is therefore not transgression that should be our watchword, but transformation (Wilson in Kemp & Squires., ed. 1997: 369-370).

Du Dictionnaire au Compagnon : Beckett en mouvement

by Matthieu Protin

Compte rendu de lecture du Dictionnaire Beckett publié par Marie-Claude Hubert Compte rendu de lecture du Dictionnaire Beckett publié par Marie-Claude Hubert

Les narrateurs en scène, l'héritage romanesque d'En attendant Godot, Fin de Partie et Oh les Beaux jours

by Matthieu Protin

My purpose is to question the importance of narrative in a theater where, as Estragon states it at the beginning of... more My purpose is to question the importance of narrative in a theater where, as Estragon states it at the beginning of Waiting for Godot, « There is nothing to show ». This importance seems directly linked to the fact that Beckett is firstly a novelist. Therefore, finding echoes  from his novels in his plays by the similarity of the themes dealt with doesn't really surprise. What is more surprising, is when what seems to be so specifically novelistic, the narrative,also becomes a very important part of the plays. The three plays studied in this paper, Oh les Beaux jours, En attendant Godot, Fin de Partie, are stylistically marked by this novelistic heritage, which can be found in the telling of the different characters : Vladimir's Gospel, Hamm's Novel, Winnie's story. The narrators are on stage. This tension between dramatic and narrative elements tackles generic issues, which may help us to understand the specificity of Beckett's dramatic writing.  The show may be over, there still is a lot to tell...

D'une rive linguistique à l'autre : Beckett sur le bateau ivre

by Matthieu Protin

« The Drunken Boat » est l’histoire d’une triple traversée : celle du bateau, contée par Rimbaud. Celle, plus... more « The Drunken Boat » est l’histoire d’une triple traversée : celle du bateau, contée par Rimbaud. Celle, plus concrète, mais peut-être tout aussi symbolique, qu’effectuera Beckett entre la France et l’Angleterre grâce à l’argent touché pour cette traduction. Celle, encore à venir en 1932, qui ramènera Beckett en France et à la langue française. Des frontières géographiques aux frontières linguistiques, la traduction se tient à la limite, entre deux rives…

Hvem er "jeg"? Om det narrative og det dialogiske i Samuel Becketts trilogi Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable [Who is "I". On Narrativity and Dialogism i Samuel Beckett's trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable]

by John Thobo-Carlsen

Published in Ove Christensen og Claus Falkenstrøm (eds.): På kant med værket. Modernismestudier 4. København: Akademisk forlag 2004, pp. 105-130.

The Music of Silence. Towards an Impossible Literature through Beckett and Woolf

by John Thobo-Carlsen

Published as Working Paper 13 in Working Papers. Significant Forms. The Rhetoric of Modernism. Aalborg University.Aalborg 2001

FLANN O’BRIEN NOTES AND REVIEWS READINGS AND VIEWINGS

by Jacques Coulardeau

Once upon a time in 2011 in Vienna, Austria, an international conference was organized by university Irish Studies aficionados and teaching personnel from several countries. The problem with Irish Studies Departments in universities is that they have more or less unified and homogenized their vision of Irish literature and particularly O’Brien. It is funny to listen to them reinventing Freudianism the way it was one century before Sigmund Freud, and then in this perspective a sausage can only be a phallic symbol, and yet they do not even realize that O’Brien was a clandestine and unconscious closet homo who never came out, whereas Samuel Becket…!!! Of course Doctor Watson.

Irish Studies university specialists find the extremely gross at times black humor of O’Brien as being nothing but... more Irish Studies university specialists find the extremely gross at times black humor of O’Brien as being nothing but funny and they laugh. They laugh at the vision of the Irish as complete primitive people and they do not see the didactic level of it, the necessary epiphany any Irishman should feel and experience when confronted to that kind of a picture. All Irish are drunkards. All Irish are liars and phantasmagoric tall tale tellers that they believe are true. All Irish are violent. All Irish are attached to their mother their father and locked up in some kind of mental closet which they cannot come out of. ETC.

They even do not confront the rewriting of some old Irish myths and tales by O’Brien and do not find out the rich anthropological matter O’Brien is transporting in his lines.

That conference was a real experience, first of all because Vienna is a magic place and secondly because of the side events but most of the presentations only wanted to make the apology of O’Brien with at times very primitive tools.

But let me be clear about another element. When we know the tremendous sectarianism and fundamentalism of Samuel Becket and his post-mortem representative, the manager of Editions de Minuit in Paris, we can wonder if it is not part of the Irish inferiority complex to stick to one reading and nothing else. Though at times some innovations are useless. For example to have the four male characters of Waiting for Godot played by women does not add anything. To have them played by four male transvestites does not add anything, except a comic aspect that is not contained in this play which is a tragic drama after the Second World War and under the menace of the nuclear holocaust. To have the two master played by either women or men and simultaneously the two servants played by either men and women respectively introduce a real  new meaning of some kind of sexual oppression of women or men according to who the masters are played by. But to forbid by principle all variation in the cast is just plain fundamentalism. Luckily this postmortem representative does not have any power beyond French borders. So that in Germany for example Samuel Becket can be read with tinted glasses. But apparently these tinted glasses had not reached Vienna. Too bad.

And no one could explain me why in all souvenir stands I have looked at, at the main station of on the main squares like next to the Votive Church, all souvenirs are in English and never in German. When I asked once an Austrian organizer of the conference, the young woman nearly told me I was insulting her while a Scotsman next to her laughed as if I had produced the most intelligent joke of the year. An inside joke for sure.

The Buzzing of B

by James Carney

Published in Beckett Re-Membered: After the Centenary. (Newcastle upon Tyne: CSP, 2012.

This article traces and comments on zoomorphic imagery in Samuel Beckett's Molloy. Its basic claim is that Beckett's... more This article traces and comments on zoomorphic imagery in Samuel Beckett's Molloy. Its basic claim is that Beckett's use of this imagery allows him to ethically engage with a material reality (what Adorno terms 'the zone of the carcass and the knacker') that is excluded by traditional humanism.

Série Samuel Beckett dans Le Monde des Livres

by Llewellyn BROWN

"Un euro le mot de Beckett" par Pierre Assouline

Is Gao Xingjian’s play Chezhan merely a blind worship of modern Western plays as the critic He Wen claims? How far can Chezhan be compared with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot?

by Helen Wang

Bulletin of the British Association for Chinese Studies, 1986, pp. 83-89.
- uploaded with the kind permission of the British Association for Chinese Studies

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"Ooftish": Writing, Orality, and the Specter of Yiddish in an Early Poem by Samuel Beckett

by Marc Caplan

Published in Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 23, Edited by Yann Mével, Dominique Rabaté, and Sjef Houppermans (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi) 2012

“Pidgin Bullskrit”: The Performance of French in Beckett's Trilogy

by Juliette Taylor-Batty

Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 15 (2005), 211-223

Imperfect Mastery: The Failure of Grammar in Beckett’s L’Innommable

by Juliette Taylor-Batty

Journal of Modern Literature 30.2 (2007), 163-179