Samuel Beckett’s skepticism regarding language’s ability to communicate effectively drives his dramas’ use of formal and stylistic gestures that emphasize the musical potential of words. In this report, I analyze Beckett’s play Endgame (1958) in light of its musical elements and their implications for performance. Critics have debated the putative presence of sonata form, a type of musical structure prevalent among classical pieces from the eighteenth century, in Endgame. Emmanuel Jacquart proposes that the play follows such a form, while Thomas Mansell and Catherine Laws doubt the possibility of such interdisciplinarity. Mansell wonders whether the ascription of sonata form to Endgame’s structure merely couches dramatic fundamentals in musical terms, while Laws argues that the lack of harmonic structure in human speech prevents a spoken medium like drama from fully absorbing the formal conventions of classical music. I explore the uncharted territory between these two critical camps, linking the implications of Jacquart’s position for the performance of Endgame, as well as Mansell’s and Laws’s reiterations of the fundamental separation of language and music, to Beckett’s own preoccupation with the inability of language to express thought and emotion adequately. Ultimately, I contend that Endgame functions not simply as a sonata, but as a frustrated sonata; that is, it approximates sonata form but can never fully replicate it. As such, Endgame becomes a point of origin for Beckett’s more experimental later plays, a concept I illustrate by demonstrating how Play (1963), the work commonly regarded as the turning point between Beckett’s early and late dramatic styles, essentially revisits and refines the frustrated sonata. / text

This dissertation corrects the notion that fiction written in the late 1920s through the early 1940s fails to achieve the mastery and innovation of high modernism. It posits late modernism as a literary dispensation that instead pushes beyond high modernism's narrative innovations in order to fully express individuals' lived experience in the era between world wars. This dissertation claims novels by Elizabeth Bowen, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett, as exemplars of a late modernism characterized by invocation and redeployment of conventionalized narrative forms in service of fresh explorations of the dislocation, inauthenticity, and alienation that characterize this era. By deforming and repurposing formal conventions, these writers construct entirely new forms whose disfigured likenesses to the genres they manipulate reveals a critical orientation to the canon. These writers' reconfigurations of forms--including the bildungsroman, the epistolary novel, and autobiography--furthermore reveal the extent to which such conventionalized genres coerce and prescribe a unified and autonomous subjectivity. By dismantling these genres from within, Bowen, Waugh, and Beckett reveal their mechanics to be instrumental in coercing into being a notion of the subject that is both limiting and delimited. These authors also invoke popular forms--including the Gothic aesthetic, imperial adventure narrative, and detective fiction--to reveal that non-canonical texts, too, participate in the process by which narrative inevitably posits consciousness as its premise. I draw upon Tyrus Miller's conception of late modernism to explicate how these authors' various engagements with established forms simultaneously perform immanent critique and narrative innovation. This dissertation also endorses David Lloyd's assertion that canonical narrative forms are instrumental in producing subjectivity within text and thereby act as a coercive exemplar for readers. I invoke several critics' engagements with conventional genres' narrative mechanics to explicate this process. By examining closely the admixture of narrative forms that churns beneath the surfaces of these texts, I aim to pinpoint how the deformation of conventionalized forms can yield a fresh and distinctly late modernist vision of selfhood.

The play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett has for a long time been considered one of his best works. Grasping the significance of key factors such as modernity, modernism and historical background is of great importance to situate and contextualise the play. As Beckett´s play belongs to the “Theatre of the Absurd”, the complicated aspects of where the play belongs has given opportunities for questioning. The intricate layers of the play have opened several doors for interpretation which has allowed diverse conclusions from various researchers. For that reason, further investigation on that matter may perhaps add another viewpoint which can be considered important to fully understand the potential of this piece. This essay examines Samuel Beckett´s famous play Waiting for Godot through the complex lens of Soren Aabaye Kierkegaard´s and Jean-Paul Sartre´s perspectives within the existentialist philosophy. Certain features of each perspectives within the philosophy such as the for-itself,in-itself and the three stages consciousness facilitate the linkage needed between the play and the theory. By using these two perspectives, this essay analyses how the elements of nothingness, purpose and meaning are apparent throughout the play. The analysis of the essay was done to: firstly, attempt to discover new possible meanings and secondly, to deepen and widen my understanding of the Beckett´s play. This essay argues that these elements provide evidence that the play contains components of both Sartre´s and Kierkegaard´s perspective of existentialism.

Fintan O'Toole states: "Plays survive not by being carefully preserved, not by being exhibited from time to time in theatrical museums, but by being tried and tested, taken apart and reassembled" (Game Without End).One of the great misconceptions and critiques of Samuel Beckett is of his presumed unrelenting control over his works. Artists, hoping to creatively collaborate with Beckett as they move his texts to performance, feel limited by his strict enforcement of that which he has written in his texts. Traditional relationships and functions allow directors to interpret an author's text. Not so with Beckett. Beckett demands that directors follow his authorial intentions as stated by his 'direct expression,' the indissoluble link between form (the text's physical nature) and content (the ideas expressed) within his texts. Beckett's control of his 'direct expression' is not a method of forcing meanings and interpretations upon his collaborators and his audience members. Rather, his purpose in protecting his 'direct expression' throughout the production process is to ensure the text's 'lack' of meaning and to preserve its ambiguities in performance. In this thesis I will analyze and argue that by preserving this 'direct expression' in Beckett's texts, the active relationships between author and reader (audience members) will be preserved throughout the production process and ultimately in the performance. Through this relationship, the viewer of the performance has the opportunity to become what Jacques Ranciere refers to as a more "active participant," composing their own poem with elements of the poem before them (Ranciere 13).

This paper suggests that a reconceptualization of the structuralist framework of story anddiscourse, the foundational concept of narrative theory, is needed in order to account for postmodernist texts. It reframes story and discourse as an “intra-textual” approach, wherein individual narrative strata are understood as equal and interrelated voices within a text, thus refusing to privilege any one aspect over another. In other words, I work to build a method of narrative analysis that interrogates form as it manifests across various levels of narrative, uncovering the patterns, connections, fissures and inconsistencies that emerge within and between the various levels in order to produce meaning. The paper then employs this method through a reading of Samuel Beckett’s postwar Trilogy that argues against traditional critical interpretations of the text, thus presenting a new possibility for historicizing Beckett at the midcentury mark.

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Nous traitons la question d’un rapport entre écriture et voix dans la clinique des psychoses. A l’appui des témoignages de sujets psychotiques, sujets disant écrire ce qui survient sous forme de voix, nous interrogeons les ressorts et les enjeux de ce passage à la lettre. Revenant sur la clinique de l’hallucination, nous détaillons ce que les sujets psychotiques nous enseignent sur les mécanismes impliqués dans l’instant de la voix hallucinée. Suivant ce fil, nous mettons en valeur la dimension de jouissance inhérente à la voix. Dans un second temps, nous nous penchons plus spécifiquement sur les pratiques d’écriture des sujets rencontrés, pratiques où il s’agit de noter, d’arrimer sur papier ce que les voix font entendre. Suivant les pistes annoncées par nos patients, nous questionnons la fonction régulatrice d’une pratique de la lettre. Pour ce faire, nous reprenons les conceptions lacaniennes de la lettre comme « littoral » ou comme « godet ». De même, les propos de nos patients nous mènent à interroger en quoi l’écriture pourrait permettre de « faire partir » la voix, en quoi elle ferait le moyen d’un détachement. Les œuvres et les témoignages d’écrivains nous donnent l’occasion de pousser plus avant notre questionnement, d’arpenter les domaines où, toujours, l’artiste précède le clinicien. Ainsi, nous revenons sur les travaux de James Joyce, de Louis Wolfson et, surtout, de Samuel Beckett. Nous nous penchons sur les indications qu’ils nous livrent au sujet d’un nouage entre écriture et voix. L’objet de notre recherche est de mettre à l’épreuve l’hypothèse selon laquelle, dans la clinique des psychoses, le recours à l’écrit peut relever d’un traitement de la voix. / We examine the issue of a link between voice and writing in psychosis. Relying on psychotic subjects who say they write what they hear through voices, we study the nature of this shifting from voice to letter. As a first step, we specify what we mean by voice. We detail what psychotic subjects teach us about the mechanisms involved in the moment of the hallucinated voice. By doing so, we point out the part of jouissance involved in voice.As a second step, we focus on their writing practices, the moment when they take note, when they put down on paper what they hear through voices. We endeavour to elucidate the issues of this movement. We are led to examine the regulating function of writing. Therefore, we refer to the lacanian concept of letter as « littoral » or « godet ». Moreover, patients’ words led us to specify how writing could be a way to make the voice “go away”, a way to separate. The works and the testimonies of writers lead us to go on exploring a field where the artist always precedes the clinician. We refer to James Joyce, to Louis Wolfson, and especially, to Samuel Beckett’s works. We try to grasp the indications they give about a link between voice and writing. The purpose is to test the hypothesis which states that, in psychosis, the use of writing can be a way to treat the voice.

Publicado em 1956 em inglês, Malone Dies foi o segundo romance do que se convencionou chamar de trilogia de romances do pós-guerra de Samuel Beckett. O presente trabalho estuda como o narrador em primeira pessoa, Malone, cria, ao longo das mais de 120 páginas, um tipo de narrar diferente, recheado de incertezas com base na aporia e na memória em frangalhos, o que leva o leitor a um terreno pantanoso em que as antigas certezas do romance tradicional foram eliminadas. O objetivo desta dissertação está em explorar como a materialidade histórica tanto do período de produção do romance, a Segunda Guerra Mundial na França ocupada, quanto o da sua publicação, imediatamente após o encerramento do conflito, são pontos cruciais para esse novo tipo de narração desenvolvido por Samuel Beckett. Paralelamente, este projeto tenta dar a sua pequena contribuição ao movimento crítico de resgate empirista realizado por uma série de críticos beckettianos que, nos últimos anos, passaram a se focar na materialidade histórica da produção do romancista e enfrentar a ideia até então consensual de que Samuel Beckett era um autor a-histórico e focado apenas em questões metafísicas. / Malone Dies was published in 1956 in English, being the second novel of what became Samuel Becketts trilogy. This work aims to study how the first person narrator, Malone, is able to establish, in 120 pages, a different kind of narration, full of uncertainties based upon aporia and in his memory in shambles, which leads the reader to an unstable ground in which the old certainties of the traditional novel are eliminated. The main goal of this dissertation is to explore how the historical materiality of both the period of the novels writing, the Second World War in occupied France, and that of its publication, soon after the war ended, are crucial points to this new type of narration developed by Samuel Beckett. At the same time, this project attempts to make its small contribution to the empiricist trend developed by many Becketts scholars which, in the last years, have focused on the historical materiality of the novelists production to confront the hitherto consensual idea that Samuel Beckett was an ahistorical author, focused only in metaphysical issues.

Partindo do exame dos pressupostos do realismo formal no romance, a dissertação pretende demonstrar como a desconfiança do narrador beckettiano quanto aos fundamentos que sustentam a voz em primeira pessoa e a estrutura ficcional do romance, observada desde Molloy e Malone Morre, dá lugar ao exame dos fundamentos relacionados à constituição da própria noção de subjetividade e desdobra-se em reflexões de natureza linguística em O inominável. Momento em que a hipótese de que é na linguagem e pela linguagem que o homem se constitui como sujeito, formulada pelo linguista Émile Benveniste, será desenvolvida considerando a dimensão trágica da experiência do eu. Com efeito, parte da tarefa da desta dissertação consiste em demonstrar a pertinência do trágico em O inominável, com o propósito de aprofundar a discussão teórica sobre a narrativa do século XX. / From an examination of the formal assumptions realism in the novel, the dissertation aims to demonstrate how distrust of Becketts narrator at the grounds that support the voice in first person and the fictional structure of the novel, observed since Molloy and Malone Dies, giving rise to the investigation of the grounds related to the constitution of the notion of subjectivity and unfolds in linguistic nature reflections in The Unnamable. Moment when the hypothesis that it is in the language and by the language that humans is constituted as subject, formulated by the linguist Émile Benveniste, will be developed based on the tragic dimension of the experience of \"I\". Indeed, part of the task of this dissertation is to demonstrate the relevance of the tragic dimension in The Unnamable, in order to deepen the theoretical discussion of the twentieth centurys narrative.

Publicado em 1956 em inglês, Malone Dies foi o segundo romance do que se convencionou chamar de trilogia de romances do pós-guerra de Samuel Beckett. O presente trabalho estuda como o narrador em primeira pessoa, Malone, cria, ao longo das mais de 120 páginas, um tipo de narrar diferente, recheado de incertezas com base na aporia e na memória em frangalhos, o que leva o leitor a um terreno pantanoso em que as antigas certezas do romance tradicional foram eliminadas. O objetivo desta dissertação está em explorar como a materialidade histórica tanto do período de produção do romance, a Segunda Guerra Mundial na França ocupada, quanto o da sua publicação, imediatamente após o encerramento do conflito, são pontos cruciais para esse novo tipo de narração desenvolvido por Samuel Beckett. Paralelamente, este projeto tenta dar a sua pequena contribuição ao movimento crítico de resgate empirista realizado por uma série de críticos beckettianos que, nos últimos anos, passaram a se focar na materialidade histórica da produção do romancista e enfrentar a ideia até então consensual de que Samuel Beckett era um autor a-histórico e focado apenas em questões metafísicas. / Malone Dies was published in 1956 in English, being the second novel of what became Samuel Becketts trilogy. This work aims to study how the first person narrator, Malone, is able to establish, in 120 pages, a different kind of narration, full of uncertainties based upon aporia and in his memory in shambles, which leads the reader to an unstable ground in which the old certainties of the traditional novel are eliminated. The main goal of this dissertation is to explore how the historical materiality of both the period of the novels writing, the Second World War in occupied France, and that of its publication, soon after the war ended, are crucial points to this new type of narration developed by Samuel Beckett. At the same time, this project attempts to make its small contribution to the empiricist trend developed by many Becketts scholars which, in the last years, have focused on the historical materiality of the novelists production to confront the hitherto consensual idea that Samuel Beckett was an ahistorical author, focused only in metaphysical issues.