Over the course of his life Beckett's work moves through a process of reduction toward increasing simplicity and concentration of means. 1 trace this reduction in Beckett's later works for the stage and compare it with the dialectics of negative theology, both Buddhist and Orthodox Christian, paying particular attention to structures of visuality and iconicity (both visual and not) in Beckett's work. The visual enjoyed a status of peculiar ontological primacy for Beckett. In it he saw exemplified both the dualisms he worked to overcome throughout his career and the saving grace that will overcome them: a "breathless immediacy" (Beckett's words) that will skip the mediation of language and the linearity of discourse and present exquisitely balanced, essentially still, nondual images. Beckett's metaphorical, that is, vertically structured stage images are subtended by metonymic texts that run through a strategic process of self-emptying in a kind of kenosis of discourse. The aporetic figures thus produced form similarly iconic structures on the textual level as can be found on the visual level. In Beckett's horizontal world a displaced sacramentalism and a phenomenologically motivated process of enquiry into the nature of things combine to create an empty space, a gray area through which the divine can enter if the audience is inclined to make such an act of faith. Beckett creates an art of Erfahrung that leads to a confrontation with an Other beyond the limits of a reductive concept of instrumental reason.

Nos proponemos demostrar que la experiencia del tedio (ennui, spleen) en la obra de Samuel Beckett, bajo una forma que identificamos como el spleen difícilmente conjurable, fragiliza gravemente la vieja idea de la ―melancolía poética‖, una de las ideas estéticas más importantes para entender el proceso de auto-comprensión emocional del genio artístico y literario moderno. Ello es así no sólo porque el escritor irlandés reelabora esporádica y negativamente las figuras y tipos más característicos de su imaginario tradicional, sino sobre todo porque la mayor negatividad que exhibe ese malestar temporal en su obra se transformaría en la fuente de una escritura paradójica, en la que persistencia en la escritura es indisociable de un sentimiento de aguda insuficiencia del lenguaje, la pérdida de evidencia de los materiales artísticos y la impotencia de la subjetividad creadora para elaborar o sublimar la tristeza que la moviliza. Proponemos reconocer en esto una ―melancolía poética‖ de signo nuevo y una formación particularmente negativa de la siempre frágil coyuntura entre la inspiración y el extravío, es decir, entre los aspectos positivos o productivos de la melancolía y sus aspectos negativos o improductivos

Thesis (Honors)--University of South Florida, 2009. / "Spring 2009." Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-63).

No description available.

This thesis examines Beckett's trilogy as a work of metafiction, approaching each novel through its primary metafictional device, the self-conscious narrator. Since the narrators are aware of their roles as story-tellers, the examination is carried out in light of Beckett's pronouncements on the nature of art and the artist. Not only are the narrators found to meet Beckett's criteria for artists and artistic development, but Beckett's aesthetic is seen virtually to require self-consciousness. In their situations, their relationship to the audience (both reader and narratee) and the nature of their tales, the self-conscious narrators follow the artistic trajectory Beckett maps out in his critical writings. As Beckett's aesthetic is fulfilled, the narrators' increasing self-consciousness intensifies the metafictional aspects of the trilogy. The trilogy is thus a demonstration of Beckett's self-conscious aesthetic--a descent into reflexivity on the part of the narrators, and through the narrators, on the part of trilogy as a whole.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-330) / vii, 330 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / 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. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2001

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio University, June, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-306).

Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam. / Auteursnaam op omslag: Asja Szafraniec. Met lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.

Zugl.: Düsseldorf, Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Basel, Univ., Diss., 2006