Samuel Beckett has long been known as a philosophical author, who drew on philosophical work to create haunting images and intricate texts that are felt by later thinkers to express so well their own questioning of the foundations of Western thought. On the other hand, Beckett's own interests lay with philosophical writers of the 17th and 18th centuries. This thesis looks at the way Beckett infuses the tenets and metaphors of the 18th -century philosopher George Berkeley with new meanings that transform early modern theories into artistic works that continue to appeal to audiences and thinkers to this day. Research into Beckett's philosophical sources was an important subject from early Beckett criticism onwards. Significant early works include Ruby Cohn's "Philosophical Fragments in the Works of Samuel Beckett" (1964);1 John Fletcher's "Beckett and the Philosophers" (1965);2 and Edouard Morot-Sir, "Samuel Beckett and Cartesian Emblems" (1976).3 What is common to these essays and other research published at the time is the identification of Beckett's thinking with a Cartesian stance. The increasing amount of archive materials available to researchers, including letters, his personal notes, and the books left in his library after his death, has had a tremendous impact by showing that Descartes was...

[pt] Esta dissertação propõe um diálogo da obra do crítico e filósofo Walter Benjamin com a obra do dramaturgo e romancista Samuel Beckett. Os dois escritores do século XX, embora tenham sido contemporâneos durante alguns anos de suas vidas e se afligido por questões em comum, não chegaram a comentar nada um sobre o outro. Isso talvez se explique pelo fato de que, na busca por fugir do regime nazista, sem visto para realizar a travessia da França para a Espanha, Benjamin comete suicídio em 1940, quando Beckett ainda estava no início de sua produção literária. Do contrário, possivelmente o crítico alemão teria pensado sobre a obra do autor irlandês, tantas são as afinidades entre eles. Para torná-las visíveis, esta dissertação se divide em três capítulos. O primeiro investiga, com base na teoria de Benjamin, o declínio das narrativas tradicionais que eram passadas oralmente entre as gerações e a ascensão de outras formas de comunicação possibilitadas pela escrita, como a informação e, sobretudo, o romance no âmbito da literatura. O segundo capítulo pretende explicitar a diferença entre o silêncio involuntário, porque traumático, dos combatentes da Primeira Guerra Mundial, diagnosticado por Benjamin, e o deliberado gesto performativo de silenciar com o qual Beckett busca tornar a linguagem porosa. O terceiro capítulo propõe aproximações entre o corpo fragmentário da escrita ensaística, adotada por Benjamin, e a maneira como Beckett eleva a incompletude da ruína aos corpos de seus personagens, que enfrentam a decadência não apenas de seus membros, mas também de suas memórias e, mais radicalmente, de sua própria identidade. / [en] This dissertation proposes a dialogue between the works from the critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin and the dramatist and romancist Samuel Beckett. The two Twentieth-century writers, although have been contemporaries during some years and afflicted by common issues, didn t have the chance to comment anything one about the other. Maybe this could be explained giving the fact that, in search for flee from the Nazi regime, without a visa to cross the border from France to Spain, Benjamin commited suicide in 1940, while Beckett was still starting his literary production. Otherwise, possibly the German critic would have thought about the work of the Irish author, given so many affinities between them. To make these apparent, this thesis is divided in three chapters: The first investigates, according to Benjamin s theory, the decline of the traditional narratives passed orally between generations and the ascension of other ways of communication made possible by writing, as the press and, especially, the novel within the literature. The second chapter seeks to explain the difference between the involuntary silence, as a trauma, of the First World War combatants, diagnosed by Benjamin, and the deliberate and performative gesture of silencing with which Beckett pursue make the language porous. The third chapter proposes approximations between the fragmentary body of the essayistic writing, adopted by Benjamin, and the way Beckett elevates the incompleteness of ruin to the bodies of his characters, who face de decadence not only of their limbs, but also of their memories and, more radically, of their own identity.

<p>Uppsatsen ingår i kursen Skapande svenska C, 30 hp, inom ämnet Litteraturvetenskap vid Umeå universitet</p>

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In recent years the study of Samuel Beckett's work has moved into increasingly specialised and archival areas. With the sheer wealth of work undertaken since the field began in the1960s and the availability of previously unobtainable materials this was somewhat of an inevitability. The sub-field of “Beckett and Philosophy”, into which this thesis most comfortably falls, has become so saturated with differing approaches that one might be forgiven for thinking new work which examines the core ideas guiding Beckett's writing redundant. One of the key contentions of this thesis is that owing to the resistance Beckett's novels offer to critical discourse, the task of understanding and explaining them is never complete. Based on this belief, I have attempted a new survey of the evolving place philosophy occupies within Beckett's novels, seeking not to discount approaches such as the archival work already mentioned, but to incorporate them into the fundamental question of what these books mean. Rather than relying upon only one theoretical approach, I attempt to draw from a variety of philosophical and literary sources, in a process free enough to work with the developmental refining of Beckett's novels throughout the years. In the first chapters on his early books, <em>Murphy</em> and <em>Watt</em>, I argue they engage in a process of bricolage, bringing out their own philosophical perspectives in an illustrative manner. The middle section of the thesis looks at the four 1946 novellas and the first work of The Trilogy, <em>Molloy</em>, as representative of a shift in Beckett's writing toward modes that employ form and content symbiotically in order to respond actively to metaphysical possibilities. In the last two chapters on <em>Malone Dies</em> and <em>The Unnamable</em> I examine the process of reduction that leads Beckett to focus largely on form, and the consequences this may have for the achievements of previous work.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-330) Resists the notion of a subversive Beckett appropriated by the cultural mainstream, by tracing the discursive limits of avante-garde writing, and by exploring how Beckett paradoxically reinforced the traditional author-function even as he appeared to challenge it.

This study explores Beckett’s use of physical movements in his plays as part of a strategy to escape the limits of semantic meaning and as an instrument of artistic expression. In a sense, the use of physical movements constitutes a phenomenological, heuristic ‘solution’ to the problem of presentation and representation that Beckett explicitly addresses already in the early 1930s. Drawing out the parallels between Beckett’s dramatic writing and phenomenology, this study seeks to establish the role perception plays in the creative task Beckett set out for himself—namely the realisation of a new means of expression. While Beckett’s careful structuring and de-structuring of movement patterns have not gone unnoticed, the philosophical consequences of Beckett’s ‘assault against words’, has not been fully appreciated. Beckett uses mis-movements not only to ‘desophisticate’ words, but also to expose the means by which the effect of aesthetic perception is produced. This is not to say that mis-movements can be reduced to a set of clear significations—according to Kant “there is no formula that can produce the beautiful”—but to suggest that Beckett uses mis-movements to refocus the audience’s attention on the realm of sensuous perception.

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Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 2002