The thesis is an analysis of the aesthetic possibilities of names in literature, with a focus on the names of characters in Samuel Beckett's French and English texts. The initial aim of this research is, therefore, twofold: to produce a study that will show and comment not only on the richness and diversity of Beckett' s naming practices, but also present literary onomastics as an inexhaustible and important source for the aesthetic appreciation of literature. In order to attain these objectives, the thesis gradually moves from the theoretical questions of literary onomastics to the more specific problems of the study of names in Beckett's fiction, eventually coming to the empirical analysis itself that unites the two directions of the research. Adopting the techniques of deconstruction, linguistics and comparative literary studies, the thesis offers a wide range of possible readings of each name, without giving preference to a particular interpretation. Apart from being one of the first attempts to provide a comprehensive critical overview that looks into the history of the study of names in Beckett's texts, this thesis also examines the function and possible meanings of the letters and roots that reappear in the names of Beckett's characters, and explores the means by which names may destabilise and mystify a character, creating a new type of unrepresentability and anonymity. Further, and more broadly, the thesis tries to redefine and re-evaluate literary onomastics, exploring the questions of meaning and reference, discussing the differences between proper and general names and looking into the ways proper names function in a literary text.

This thesis examines the career of Jean Ricardou after 1982. The introduction indicates the obscurity in which he Ricardou’s reputation languishes currently. Chapter 1 sketches Ricardou’s career until 1982 and examines the denunciations of him by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon pronounced in that year, and how critics have subsequently portrayed him. Chapter 2 describes Ricardou’s involvement in writing workshops in France and the role he played in developing them and exercises to be used in such workshops, in particular the Bestiaire. Chapter 3 introduces the new discipline of textique which aims to provide a theoretical description of all phenomena associated with writing starting from the simplest mark. Chapter 4 suggests that textique, because of its militant materialism, might be susceptible to ultra-left tendencies. Chapters 5 and 6 examine textique as literary criticism, the former with reference to Une Maladie chronique, the latter to sonnets by Heredia and Mallarmé. Chapter 7 examines Ricardou’s later fiction, the concept of the “mixte” as developed in Le théâtre des métamorphoses and Hommage à Jean Paulhan and in these texts and La cathédrale de Sens, it explores the commonly held opinion that Ricardou’s work is “anti-referential”. The conclusion looks at factors that could influence the expansion of textique’s influence, its difficulty or reluctance to find an audience and its relation to those that Ricardou considers to be the great thinkers of the modern era, Mallarmé, Freud and Marx.