This dissertation articulates the relationship between literary form and unconscious affect in fictions by Cesare Pavese, Samuel Beckett and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Drawing from contemporary psychoanalytic object-relations theory, including the work of W.R. Bion and the Bionian school, it defines three paradigmatic forms of psychic work — reparation, containment and construction — that structure the intersubjective unconscious responses to specific formal challenges. It claims that the psychic work involved in meeting those challenges is both “historical” — in the sense that it reveals elements of each text’s historicity and political valence within their cultural setting — and “productive,” in the sense that it entails a degree of psychic growth for the reader. This dissertation bridges literary history, psychoanalytic theory and reader-response theory. It seeks to intervene in each discipline’s debates: in literary-historical terms, it argues that the psychic work of reading must be understood as constitutive of the texts’ expression of the context of the postwar and as part of their struggle to move beyond the aesthetic of modernism. In psychoanalytic terms, it joins in the lively discussion about the historical specificity of the mechanisms theorized by object-relations theory. Finally, at the level of literary theory, it seeks to affirm the value of Bion’s model of object-relations in theorizing reading as a transformative process characterized by intense unconscious, intersubjective activity. The dissertation is organized in three literary chapters, followed by a theoretical chapter. Taken together, the first three chapters represent the evidence for the need of a concept of psychic work in reading late modernist fiction and for the potential payoffs of formulating such a concept. Chapter 4 consists of four theoretical “notes,” addressing, in broad terms, the resonance of intersubjective notions of psychic work for reading, criticism and literary theory.

Cette thèse présente une étude théorique et épistémologique du concept de jeu -étude qui, tout en prenant ancrage dans la tradition sociologique, se fonde sur l'herméneutique de H.G. Gadamer ainsi que sur la dialectique hégélienne. Divisée en deux parties -respectivement intitulées Sociologie(s) du jeu et Herméneutique et dialectique du jeu -la thèse examine, dans un premier temps, les principaux textes fondateurs de la pensée sociologique sur le jeu, en suivant l'exigence formulée par l'herméneutique de Gadamer d'un dialogue avec autrui et d'une appropriation et d'une reconnaissance de la légitimité de son propos. Au travers de ce dialogue; les concepts et les représentations qui ont tissé la pensée sociologique du jeu sont identifiés et ressaisis. La première partie de la thèse compte trois chapitres correspondant chacun aux trois principales bases épistémologiques de la sociologie -le situationnisme ou interactionnisme, le monisme ou holisme et l'individualisme méthodologique -qui, elles-mêmes, renvoient à trois manières différentes de concevoir le jeu, c'est-à-dire, respectivement: le jeu comme métaphore de la socialité (Ch. 1), le jeu comme prisme de la civilisation (Ch. 2) et enfin, le jeu comme instrument d'analyse de l'action rationnelle (Ch. 3). Dans un deuxième temps, la thèse relit et relie les différentes études sociologiques sur le jeu en retournant au phénomène du jeu principalement le théâtre, mais aussi les échecs et le hockey -en compagnie de la dialectique hégélienne et du processus de suppression-conservation qui la structure. Se divisant également en trois chapitres, la deuxième partie de la thèse se présente comme un exposé des différentes médiations au travers desquelles le jeu se réalise progressivement. Dans son moment subjectif (Ch. 4), le jeu est travaillé par la médiation des émotions, de l'imagination et du style. L'intermédiation de la liberté, de la règle et de la mesure constitue, par ailleurs, le jeu dans son moment objectif (Ch. 5). Et enfin, dans son moment esthétique (Ch. 6), le jeu accède à la qualité de représentation, voire d'une belle représentation, et il se configure et se montre au travers de l'articulation dialectique de ses qualités musicales, plastiques et dramatiques. En somme, l'examen du devenir du jeu qui est ici mené « fait voir » et « voit-faire » le jeu en le voilant et en le dévoilant à la fois, et ce dans la mesure où la mise à jour des différentes médiations par lesquelles le jeu se constitue, se forme et se déploie sur le plan phénoménal dévoile et fait voir le jeu en tant que concept, mais au travers de son dévoilement, le concept jette en quelque sorte un voile sur le phénomène du jeu et le « fait-voir » et le « voit-faire » en sa qualité de symbole du symbolique, ainsi qu'en son activité de formation de soi, du social et du beau. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Jeu, Sociologie, Théâtre, Hockey, Jeu d'échecs, Gadamer, Hegel, Samuel Beckett.

This project charts the emergence of the Cuban Theatre of the Absurd, or teatro del absurdo, over the course of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, its suppression by the revolutionary government, and its revival during the "Special Period" of the 1990s. Rather than understand the category as either an extension of the European Theatre of the Absurd, or as the invention of scholars intent on exporting such a schematic to Latin America, the Cuban teatro del absurdo should be recognized as a material phenomenon that evolved organically within the Havana theatre community, proposed a historically specific Cuban absurd as its object of representation, and assumed great ideological importance within the cultural and political landscape of the time. Its chief pioneer and practitioner was Virgilio Piñera, while José Triana and Antón Arrufat produced foundational absurdist works of the post-revolutionary period. Their plays and critical essays affirm the teatro del absurdo as a site of edification for audiences because of the anti-ideological nature of the works performed, and the authority these performances bestow on spectators as meaning creators. Because the teatro del absurdo opened conceptual space for difference in reception, while also operating as a cosmopolitan margin where European influences were incorporated within plays that spoke to the absurdity of Cuba's socio-political reality, it posed a threat to the univocal ideological control of the revolutionary government. The absurdo's resonance during the Special Period and within contemporary Cuban theatre is a testament to its enduring viability as a dynamic form that allows multiple truths and voices to be heard. Chapter one of the study explores the critical archive surrounding both the European Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of the Absurd in Latin America and Cuba. It argues that, rather than discard the category as imperfect or perpetuate a paradigm that privileges text over performance, critics should account for its unique ideological currency within the specific context of pre and post-revolutionary Cuba by tracking the material extension of the term and the works subsumed by it within Havana's theatre and performance archive. Chapter two investigates the historical basis of the Cuban absurdo, localizable in the concept of choteo, and maps the concept's valence in the context of 19th century teatro bufo as well as Piñera's early theatre of the 1940s and 50s. Chapter three considers the role of the teatro del absurdo in post-revolutionary Cuba by examining works by Piñera, Triana and Arrufat in conjunction with their critical essays of the time, in order to capture the political significance of the genre as a zone of dissidence and opposition to the total system of the revolution. Chapter four tracks the revival of the teatro del absurdo as a source of endurance during the privation of the Special Period of the 1990s. The re-emergence of voices like Piñera's signaled a return to a past of provocation and confrontation in order to generate a future in which space for difference would be preserved. / text

Not available / text

Often considered to be apolitical playwrights, Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard each dedicated dramatic works to dissident Czech playwright (and later President) Václav Havel in the late 1970s and early 1980s—during his imprisonment for his role in writing and distributing the dissident document Charter 77. These dramatic works, with a few others, collectively mark simultaneous, parallel shifts in Beckett’s and Stoppard’s careers toward uncharacteristically explicit political engagement. This report examines these works—Beckett’s Catastrophe and What Where, and Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul—through the lens of Havel’s political philosophy, especially as expressed in his 1978 essay “The power of the powerless.” This report argues that Havel’s model of apolitical resistance to injustice, a model he calls “living in truth,” expresses humanist values that these playwrights had long affirmed in their art. Their shared moral vision, along with sympathy for Havel’s plight under a totalitarian regime that distorted language as a tool of oppression, was the catalyst for their new, direct involvement in political matters. The report establishes the historical context of the Soviet-dominated Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, along with relevant biographical and professional narratives for each figure. It then examines closely this selection of Beckett’s and Stoppard’s dramatic works and their shared thematic concerns, and demonstrates how they artistically embody and communicate Havel’s model of “living in truth.” / text

This dissertation seeks to identify, contextualize, and explain the achievement of late modernist novelists. Late modernism represents a significant, under-examined chapter in the development of the twentieth-century novel. Unlike the majority of their peers in the decades after modernism’s height, novelists such as Henry Green, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Elizabeth Bowen—and the best-known, Samuel Beckett—continue to innovate in prose rather than returning to realism. Unlike their predecessors, late modernists move towards doubt, eschewing the sometimes ultimately redemptive ethos of high modernism. They do so without the insistence of later postmodernists, however, or their playful mood. The result is something new, strange, and “in between.” The aims of this study are to specify the nature of late modernist style, place it in its aesthetic and historical context, and explain its significance. Each chapter is a close reading of key works by one writer: each novelist uses different techniques to add to the late modernist aesthetic, but they all move in the same direction. The first chapter explores Henry Green’s work, analyzing the textual omissions and narrative construction that make his novels so evasive. In Compton-Burnett’s case, the focus is on how dialogue creates a constantly shifting moral world in which nothing can be taken for granted. The chapter on Beckett explores repetition, both as a microscopic stylistic tool and an organizing device that prevents the text from reaching conclusion. In examining Bowen, the centre is how her syntax circles continually around various kinds of “nothingness” and self-reflexively suggests ways to explore it. This study arranges late modernist novelists in a new continuum alongside Samuel Beckett, with the result that Beckett seems less a unique genius, and the other late modernist writers seem less eccentric and more profoundly challenging. They all seek ways to go on writing when doing so seems impossible. Late modernists bring something new to the novel. Through the smallest stylistic gestures, their works make and unmake themselves, refusing to allow the reader finality. They avoid the aesthetic and philosophical associations of either consolation or utter uncertainty; late modernists matter by refusing to matter in a familiar way.

This dissertation seeks to identify, contextualize, and explain the achievement of late modernist novelists. Late modernism represents a significant, under-examined chapter in the development of the twentieth-century novel. Unlike the majority of their peers in the decades after modernism’s height, novelists such as Henry Green, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Elizabeth Bowen—and the best-known, Samuel Beckett—continue to innovate in prose rather than returning to realism. Unlike their predecessors, late modernists move towards doubt, eschewing the sometimes ultimately redemptive ethos of high modernism. They do so without the insistence of later postmodernists, however, or their playful mood. The result is something new, strange, and “in between.” The aims of this study are to specify the nature of late modernist style, place it in its aesthetic and historical context, and explain its significance. Each chapter is a close reading of key works by one writer: each novelist uses different techniques to add to the late modernist aesthetic, but they all move in the same direction. The first chapter explores Henry Green’s work, analyzing the textual omissions and narrative construction that make his novels so evasive. In Compton-Burnett’s case, the focus is on how dialogue creates a constantly shifting moral world in which nothing can be taken for granted. The chapter on Beckett explores repetition, both as a microscopic stylistic tool and an organizing device that prevents the text from reaching conclusion. In examining Bowen, the centre is how her syntax circles continually around various kinds of “nothingness” and self-reflexively suggests ways to explore it. This study arranges late modernist novelists in a new continuum alongside Samuel Beckett, with the result that Beckett seems less a unique genius, and the other late modernist writers seem less eccentric and more profoundly challenging. They all seek ways to go on writing when doing so seems impossible. Late modernists bring something new to the novel. Through the smallest stylistic gestures, their works make and unmake themselves, refusing to allow the reader finality. They avoid the aesthetic and philosophical associations of either consolation or utter uncertainty; late modernists matter by refusing to matter in a familiar way.

The thesis: "The easiest thing of all is to pass judgement on what has a solid substantial content; it is more difficult to grasp it and most of all difficult to do both together and produce the systematic exposition of it". (Hegel). Since at least 1960 there has been a considerable amount of critical attention paid to Beckett. Besides articles, reviews, chapters and paragraphs, by 1979 more, than sixty books had been published devoted exclusively to him. A lot of this critical work has been of the highest standard and certainly it is hard to imagine how a serious appreciation of Beckett could survive without it. But it is my opinion that at the heart of his writing there is an inescapable mass of involvement with the fundamental issues of existence that has yet to be dealt with adequately. In this thesis I intend to attack this central core of Beckett's work by associating it with the discipline which, by definition, operates in the same area - philosophy. This will provide a new "reading" of Beckett and at the same time show how far philosophical analogy can illuminate a writer.

Samuel Beckett penned novels, short stories, poetry, stage plays, radio plays, and scripts—and he did each in a way that blended genre, challenged the norms of creative writing, and surprised audiences around the globe. His experimental approach to creative writing included the use of absurdism, genre-hybridization, and ergodicism, which led to Beckett fundamentally changing the approach to creative writing. His aesthetics have trickled down through the years and can be seen in contemporary works, including Aimee Bender’s short story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves[1]. By examining these works in comparison to Beckett, this project hopes to illuminate the effects of Beckett’s experimentation in form and genre on contemporary creative writing. [1] The word ‘house’ appears in blue to honor Danielewski’s decision to have the word printed in that color each time it appears in his novel.

No description available.