This study carries out both a technical and a thematic analysis of the novels by Albert Camus, L&amp / #8217 / Etranger, La Peste, and La Chute, and Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. In the technical analysis of the novels, the study explores the differences in characterization and narrative technique. It argues that the differences in these two issues mainly emerge from the difference in the two authors&amp / #8217 / views of art. In the thematic analysis, on the other hand, the study focuses on the recurring themes in the two authors&amp / #8217 / novels. It argues that Camus and Beckett explore similar themes in their novels because both writers belong to the absurd tradition. In other words, although their notions of art are different, their views of the human condition are quite similar, which is reflected in the common themes they explore in their novels.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Universität Heidelberg, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-344) and indexes.

104f. / Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-05-15T13:57:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Celso Oliveira Jr..pdf: 490842 bytes, checksum: 9f7edcaaec7f31b637755643010da97b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Alda Lima da Silva(sivalda@ufba.br) on 2013-05-16T17:56:37Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Celso Oliveira Jr..pdf: 490842 bytes, checksum: 9f7edcaaec7f31b637755643010da97b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-16T17:56:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Celso Oliveira Jr..pdf: 490842 bytes, checksum: 9f7edcaaec7f31b637755643010da97b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / A fundamentação teórica e literária sobre os conceitos de estupor, de fraturas narrativas e de interrupção de fluxo narrativo. Os estudos sobre o efeito de estupor sob o ponto de vista da psiquiatria e da psicanálise, do ritmo e efeitos da narrativa. O estudo crítico sobre o estupor em William Shakespeare, Anton Tchekhov e Samuel Beckett. O sentido e a evolução dos pressupostos fundamentais da tragédia. O estupor como hýbris. A precipitação trágica do drama beckettiano a partir destes pressupostos. Uma gênese da poética beckettiana, através das suas relações filosóficas e da sua experiência como crítico literário e de arte. O retrato do artista enquanto crítico. As relações filosóficas de Beckett e a constituição do Beckett-escritor a partir do Beckett-crítico. Leitura dos escritos críticos de Beckett sobre a obra de James Joyce, de Marcel Proust e de pintores modernos, em articulações com exemplos da obra dramatúrgica e ficcional do autor Leitura crítica do drama Eleutheria, escrito por Samuel Beckett em 1947. O estupor, enquanto hýbris, atuando como estratégia de libertação e motivo de ruína. / Salvador

Samuel Beckett is often thought of as an experimental writer but little critical attention has been paid to the question of what the term ‘experimental’ means when applied to Beckett’s work (and arguably literature in general). One might suggest that to call Beckett an experimental writer is to identify him as a member of the avant-garde, placing his writing in opposition to more commercially-orientated, ‘mainstream’ works of literature. Alternatively, the term might be taken to highlight Beckett’s formal innovations – his capacity to change conceptions of what literature is and does. This study, though, will specify another way in which we might understand Beckett’s writing to be experimental. Drawing on Beckett’s engagement with experimental and therapeutic psychology, the study suggests that Beckett’s works might be seen as experiments in a more scientific sense. Through readings of his later works for page, stage and screen, the chapters of this study suggest that Beckett’s writing can contribute to our knowledge of psychological concepts such as perception, attention and mental imagery. Beckett’s works, I argue, might be defined as experimental insofar as they position and stimulate human bodies in ways that allow us to better understand our complex, but partial, experiences of the world.

Beckett donne à la littérature du XXe siècle, suite au traumatisme langagier induit par Auschwitz, une dimension nouvelle, en plaçant au cœur du texte un silence profondément positif, moteur, centre et point de départ de tout événement. Dès lors, le silence devient élément structurant, constructeur. La dialectique traditionnelle entre silence et parole est donc repensée, et les limites entre ces deux instances, gommées. Le silence forge alors une tension palpable, creusant le texte ainsi soumis à un devenir. Or dans l’esthétique beckettienne, la tension devient le socle de l’identité : l’être se constitue en sujet du fait de la tension qui le traverse. Mu par une poussée désirante, le sujet se tient à la limite mais résiste encore au processus de disparition qui l’assaille. / Following the linguistic trauma induced by Auschwitz, Beckett gives to twentieth-century literature a new dimension, placing at the heart of his text a silence that is profoundly positive, motivating, and which serves as the center and point of departure for every event. From this point forward, silence becomes constructive, taking its place as a structuring element. The traditional dialectic between silence and speech is thus rethought, as the limit between these two poles is rubbed away. Silence forges a palpable tension that digs within a text in the process of becoming. Yet, in the Beckettian aesthetic, tension becomes the base of identity: being constitutes itself as a subject because of the tension that traverses it. Impelled by desire, the subject teeters at its limit, yet continues to resist the threat of disappearance that plagues it.

L’œuvre de Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) est traversée de diverses figures du spectateur. Le terme de spectateur désigne le regardeur et le témoin oculaire d’un événement, et s’emploie souvent depuis l’Antiquité, avec une connotation négative soulignant la passivité. Penser « le » spectateur ne vise pas directement les spectateurs effectifs : c’est une manière de reconsidérer cette entité perceptive au niveau de l’idée. « Le » spectateur interroge sur la corrélation entre la position passive et la perceptivité. L’étude ici présentée, au travers de ce spectateur idéal, cherche à mettre au jour la manière dont il soutient, par sa force négative et perceptive, la créativité de Beckett. Il est indéniable que la philosophie rationaliste du XVIIe siècle, notamment celle d’Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669) influe sur la genèse des figures du spectateur beckettiennes. Elles apparaissent d’abord dans le roman, évoluent ensuite dans le théâtre et l’art audiovisuel, et finissent par engendrer les proses poétiques ultérieures pleines d’imagination perceptive. Tout en déjouant adroitement l’intention du philosophe, Beckett reconstitue l’ordre de l’univers fictif selon l’irrationnel, et ce geste donne naissance à une nouvelle forme d’écriture qui se libère des présupposés philosophiques et des conventions littéraires. Chez Beckett, la passivité n’est pas le contraire de l’activité ou la négation de l’acte, mais elle est la capacité à sentir et à percevoir les choses, de façon tout à fait originale et productive. Par leur passivité même, les figures du spectateur beckettiennes agissent sur le contenu, voire la forme même de l’œuvre. / The work of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is featured by various figures of “the” spectator. The term of spectator refers the viewer and the eyewitness of an event, and is often used since ancient times, with a negative connotation highlighting passivity. Thinking “the” spectator does not mean directly actual audience in the theatre, but it is a way to reconsider this perceptive entity at the level of the idea. “The” spectator questions the correlation between the passive position and perceptiveness. Through this ideal spectator, our study will try to clarify how it supports, by its negative and perceptive power, creativity of Beckett. It is undeniable that the rationalist philosophy of the seventeenth century, particularly Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669), influences the genesis of Beckettian figures of “the” spectator. They first appear in the novel, then develop in the theatre and audiovisual art, and at last, generate the later poetic prose full of perceptive imagination. By outmaneuvering ingeniously the intention of the philosopher, Beckett reconstructs the order of the fictional world according to the irrational, and this brings about a new form of writing that is free from philosophical presuppositions and literary conventions. In Beckett’s work, the passivity is not the opposite of the activity or the negation of the act, but it is the ability to feel and perceive things, in a way absolutely original and productive. Owing to their very passivity, the figures of “the” spectator act on the content and the shape of the work.

This dissertation explores Irish and English fiction before, during, and shortly after the Second World War, a period of complex change in the relations between England and Ireland as British imperial control in Ireland ended. Ireland's neutrality in response to England's declaration of war intensified the nations' apparent differences, yet as my study brings to light, the War also fostered new affinities between England and Ireland, despite each country's inclination to define itself against the other by contrast. Each country's tendency toward xenophobic self-definition gave rise to policies and perspectives that resemble thinking and life in a fascist state. The fiction that I discuss responds to those tendencies by revealing possibilities for collectives that are more dynamically constituted around forms of vision and engagement involving shared responsibility and individual freedom. Chapter 1 reads Virginia Woolf's novel Between the Acts (1941) as a working through of contrasting responses to dictators from a 1938 diary entry and her manifesto Three Guineas, published the same year. I argue that character interactions and self-reflection in response to a play performed in the novel allow characters to recognize fascist tendencies in their own thinking and discover collective visions contrary to the total allegiance prized in Nazi spectacle and English propaganda. Against the mostly ahistorical critical treatments of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman (written 1939-1940, published 1966), Chapter 2 traces affinities between the narrator's deluded belief in his own superiority in a milieu of suppressed violence and the psychological environment Irish neutrality created. Focusing on Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Heat of the Day (1948) and wartime short fiction, Chapter 3 argues that her characters' behavior challenges stereotypes about English and Irish residents promoted by the other country. Rather than offering the escape from the War that some English visitors desire, Ireland provides a vantage point for seeing their London lives in new ways. Chapter 4 takes Nazi narratives of German history as reference points for interpreting Samuel Beckett's Watt (written 1942-1945, published 1953) and Molloy (1955), in particular the narrators' attempts to hide their control over the narratives they shape and the collectives that surround them.

My PhD. thesis "Physiognomy of Writing: In the Folds of Literary Ornament" deals with the relation between literature and ornament. It interconnects the sphere of literary history and literary theory with that of visuality. Ornament is analyzed and interpreted as a theoretical figure which allows an examination of literature from the point of view of its visuality and its movement. This approach, elaborated and applied here, labeled "physiognomy of writing", offers a possibility of a visual reading of literature; it represents a way to read literary texts not only in terms of their meaning and message, but also from the point of view of their visual and figural performance. In the first part I outline the concept of ornament in its historical, esthetic and philosophical frames, and explain how to use it in order to interpret literature. The second part offers readings of several 20th century literary texts (Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Samuel Beckett, Louis Wolfson and Blanche T.) from the perspective of the affinity of their literary speech and particular ornamental manifestations.

The aim of the thesis is to provide a comprehensive view of the works of Samuel Beckett from the beginning to the novel Molloy. It is based on analysis of individual works and the subsequent attempt to uncover their interconnections. The thesis is divided into three parts: theory, poetry and prose. The first part deals mainly with the concept of incoherent reality which Beckett speaks about for the first time in his essay Proust and then returns to in other texts. In the novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women he makes it the basis of his own aesthetic. Behind the phenomena of the outer world lies chaos and nothingness and the artist's task is to integrate it into his work. The second part discusses the changes in the subject of the poems, his being or not being in particular surroundings, the amount of literary allusions, the themes and the form of the poems, above all the particular techniques Beckett uses and the degree of their regularity and elaboration. The third part raises similar questions about prose. The unquestionable centre of Beckett's poems and prose is the subject of the poems and the main character, characterized by tension between inside and outside. The change in the character is caused by outweighing of the tendency to stay inside. This also results in the reduction in allusions...

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