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Senses of Freedom explores Walter Pater’s provocative claim that poetry’s defining importance would be to “rearrange the details of modern life” in order to restore the “sense of freedom” lost to modern consciousness. Freedom, variously defined and contested, has long been a central concern to philosophical aesthetics, but few have made its problematics central to an applied criticism. The critical practice I explore asks how form, in a given instance, provides a “sense of freedom” by addressing anxieties of causal determinism, and foregrounding the cultural and linguistic materiality of a subjective perspective. After an introduction outlining and contextualizing a formalist aesthetic criticism drawn from Pater’s work, the dissertation is divided into two parts. Part I surveys aestheticism’s determinist vision (Chapter I) and defines the complex term personality (Chapter II) across Pater’s oeuvre. Aestheticism’s determinism anchors the authorial personality to a network of historically contingent cultural and linguistic determinants; while the personality in turn gives an epistemologically accessible human form to these defining “forces.” Part II exemplifies aesthetic criticism in stand-alone essays on the poetry of three modern authors: Charlotte Mew, Samuel Beckett, and W. H. Auden. In Mew’s work I examine the structure of confinement and passionate renunciation in the form of the hushed tone broken by the “cri de coeur.” In Beckett, I consider the gnomic mode as resolving the problematized space, the “no-man’s land,” between objective and subjective artistic positions. In Auden, I explore how the “gratuitous” and “gratitude” align in his later work, the former an attempt to find artistic freedom within an adequate determinism, and the latter the resolution to recognize world and self in their radical necessity. / 2026-01-31T00:00:00Z

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<p>This study shows how the narrative strategies of Beckett's early fiction, developed as a dialogical response to Joyce's work, lead to an implied critique of conventional notions of narrative and subjectivity. Beckett's work, the study argues, takes up the challenge posed by Joyce's "Work in Progress," and Beckett's individualistic reading of Proust, and finally "refus[es] the possibilities of modernist writing" (Said 50). Thus Beckett attempts an "impossible" fiction in which protagonists and narrators reject their roles, the presumption of audience interest is examined and sacrificed, and the speaker's power over language radically questioned. Consequently, More Pricks than Kicks, Murphy, watt, Malone Dies and The Unnameable demonstrate the fictional potential of rejected and "impossible" tactics such as silence, futility, and apparent incompetence.</p> <p>The study demonstrates that the isolated individualism of Beckett's protagonists is associated with a breakdown of language and self, a process that provides a fictional anticipation of the theoretical view that language removed from either actual or conventional situations of utterance and reply ("writing" as opposed to speech) becomes an autonomous sign-system which remains silent about questions of self and identity. (Since it is only in human dialogue, in taking up an anchored subject-position within language, that a speaker's subjectivity can emerge). Beckett's protagonists, seeking to maintain their distance from the social distribution of subject positions, and seeking to propagate their personal monologue outside any dialogue, find themselves lost in a "moment before speech," or in language without parole, and thus are unable to base their own subjectivity in the unmoored or ungrounded discourse they inhabit. To explicate these implicit ideas, I turn to theorists of language and the self such as Emile Benveniste and Jacques Lacan (whose ideas were developing at the same time as Beckett was writing the works treated: in Paris in the 1930's). iv</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis advisor: Joseph Nugent / In this paper, I unite scholarly understanding of T. S. Eliot’s recurring character, Sweeney. I present the origin of Sweeney through Eliot’s knowledge of classical and Irish myth as well as his contemporary views surrounding Ireland, Catholicism, Africa, and Afro-modernism. In discussing dramatic Sweeney, I incorporate an understanding of Eliot’s contemporary works on Senecan tragedy to unravel the fragmented nature of “Sweeney Agonistes.” I conclude my first chapter by discussing Sweeney’s “death” by analyzing Eliot’s recent conversion to Anglicanism and emerging views of poetic metaphysics. My second chapter unveils the ghost of Sweeney in Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral” through the metaphor of stencil art, discussing “Sweeney Agonistes” as an outline. Further, I find Sweeney’s ghost in the work of Samuel Beckett’s "Waiting For Godot" through analysis of themes drawn from an article by Rick De Villier, as well as new studies on technique and characters. I conclude with my explanation of Sweeney as a “new” Senecan Tragic Hero based on the terminology of semper idem - always the same. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: Departmental Honors.

Dans ce mémoire de recherche-création en littératures de langue française, j’aborde la question des rapports entre les procédés de réécriture (par exemple, l’intertextualité, l’intratextualité et l’autotextualité, mais aussi les figures de la répétition et de la correction) et l’effet de défamiliarisation (ou de distanciation) au moyen d’un essai sur le roman Mercier et Camier de Samuel Beckett et d’une création littéraire de mon cru : un livre-objet constitué de trente et une feuilles non paginées et non reliées, sur lesquelles je réécris autant de fois l’incipit de Bouvard et Pécuchet, de Gustave Flaubert, en recourant à une mise en page qui défie le mode de lecture linéaire. Autant mon essai que ma création s’appliquent à montrer que les procédés de réécriture peuvent être employés pour produire un effet de défamiliarisation visant la fonction représentative de la littérature. / In this creative Master’s Thesis in French Literature, I addess the issue of the relationship between processes of rewriting (eg, intertextuality, intratextuality and autotextuality, but also the figures of repetition and correction) and defamiliarization (or the distancing effect) by the means of an essay on the novel Mercier et Camier by Samuel Beckett and of a literary creation of my own, consisting of thirty-one unbounded and unpaginated sheets, on which I rewrote as many times the incipit of Bouvard et Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert in a layout that defies linear reading. Both my essay and my creation intend to show that processes of rewriting can be used to defamiliarize the representative function of literature.

Cette thèse s'attache à mettre en lumière une véritable continuité littéraire de Wilde à Beckett, tissée par une poétique de la présence qui maintient leurs oeuvres dans une permanente instabilité, aux frontières de l'ininterprétable, tout en soulignant les particularités des voies poétiques qu'ils empruntent. L'absence est une présence étrangement dense chez ces auteurs qui captent des persistances fantomatiques, interrogeant la possibilité de la représentation, de la perception et de l'altérité. Entre présence et absence, la mort est au coeur d'oeuvres qui réinventent l'héritage gothique pour exprimer l'horreur de la dégradation du moi, l'angoisse du devenir-Objet, processus de hantise qui conduit à deux esthétiques croisées de la décomposiiton. Le texte wildien est un jalon menant à la représentation beckettienne de la disparition des frontières entre vie et mort. la présence structure aussi sur le mode métatextuel : par la mise en abyme et la métathéâtralité, la représentation se fait fragmentaire pour montrer les failles d'une présence paradoxale au coeur d'un théâtre de la revenance. la suprématie de l'art sur le réel et du style sur la substance apparaissent : entre épuisement et emballement, leurs écritures sont caractérisées par la précision et la cohérence tout en décrivant le vacillement des certitudes et des conventions. De leur rapport ambivalent à l'Irlande naît un texte se déployant dans un "entre-Trois" linguistique (anglais, français, et gaélique). Les oeuvres permettent de faire l'expérience de la présence à la limite de la disparition, menant à une écriture de l'entre-Deux pour défaire les frontières, trouver des passages, inventer de nouvelles voies. / This thesis aims at highlighting a deep literary continuity from Wilde to Beckett, through a poetic of the presence which keeps their works in a permanent instability, verging on the impossibility of interpreting, while underlining the specificities of the poetic ways they undertake. The absence is a strangely dense presence in the works of those two writers who get ghostly remainings, questioning the possibility of representation, of perception and otherness. Between presence and absence, death is at the core of works which reinvent the gothic legacy to express which leads to two crossed aesthetics of decomposition. The Wildean text is a hinge leading to the Beckettian representation of the disappearance of the frontiers between life and death. The presence also structures on a metatextual mode : through mise en abyme and metatheatricality, the representation becomes fragmentary in order to show the weaknesses of a paradoxical presence at the heart of a spectral theatre. The supremacy of art over reality and of style over substance appear : between exhaustion and profusion, their writings are characterized by precision and consistency while describing the wavering of certainties and conventions. Their ambivalent relationship to Ireland brings forth a text existing in the intermediary space between English, French and Gaelic. Their works foster the experience of presence verging on disapppearence, leading to an in-Between writing to dismiss frontiers, to find new passages and invent new ways.

Dans ce mémoire de recherche-création en littératures de langue française, j’aborde la question des rapports entre les procédés de réécriture (par exemple, l’intertextualité, l’intratextualité et l’autotextualité, mais aussi les figures de la répétition et de la correction) et l’effet de défamiliarisation (ou de distanciation) au moyen d’un essai sur le roman Mercier et Camier de Samuel Beckett et d’une création littéraire de mon cru : un livre-objet constitué de trente et une feuilles non paginées et non reliées, sur lesquelles je réécris autant de fois l’incipit de Bouvard et Pécuchet, de Gustave Flaubert, en recourant à une mise en page qui défie le mode de lecture linéaire. Autant mon essai que ma création s’appliquent à montrer que les procédés de réécriture peuvent être employés pour produire un effet de défamiliarisation visant la fonction représentative de la littérature. / In this creative Master’s Thesis in French Literature, I addess the issue of the relationship between processes of rewriting (eg, intertextuality, intratextuality and autotextuality, but also the figures of repetition and correction) and defamiliarization (or the distancing effect) by the means of an essay on the novel Mercier et Camier by Samuel Beckett and of a literary creation of my own, consisting of thirty-one unbounded and unpaginated sheets, on which I rewrote as many times the incipit of Bouvard et Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert in a layout that defies linear reading. Both my essay and my creation intend to show that processes of rewriting can be used to defamiliarize the representative function of literature.

Ce travail de recherche se propose d’analyser le rapport de Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) à la danse ainsi que la relation de deux chorégraphes contemporains Dominique Dupuy (1930-) et Maguy Marin (1951-) à ses œuvres. La première partie démontre que Samuel Beckett a été influencé par la danse moderne qu’il a découverte dans l’entre-deux-guerres. Son écriture est devenue plus gestuelle et son propos plus politique. Ainsi, aux corps sains et glorieux promus par les arts nazis, oppose-t-il dans son premier théâtre les corps vulnérables travaillés par la vieillesse et les handicaps, ceux d’hommes que le IIIe Reich a voulu rendre superflus. En 1953, la danse de Lucky d’En attendant Godot est un moyen de dire l’innommable de cette violence. En 1981, la danse de Quad fait resurgir les fantômes du passé pour prévenir le retour du pire. Comment le dire ? La danse, un art du « non mot » participe à cette recherche qui traverse l’œuvre de Samuel Beckett. Ce dont on ne peut pas parler, c’est cela qu’il faut danser. Dans un deuxième temps, cette étude montre comment les œuvres de Samuel Beckett sont à leur tour inductrices de danses où les êtres vulnérables résistent et appellent au care. Danser avec Oh les beaux jours, Acte sans paroles et Cap au pire permet à Dominique Dupuy d’interroger les possibles du grand âge et d’en transformer les représentations. A partir de Fin de partie, Maguy Marin écrit en 1981 May B, une pièce chorégraphique, aux antipodes de la danse performante, qui rend visibles les handicaps. Son œuvre invite à une lecture actualisante de l’œuvre de Samuel Beckett prenant en considération la condition des personnes handicapées et permettant d’entrevoir la possibilité d’une société plus inclusive. La dernière partie témoigne qu’une lecture éthique des œuvres de Samuel Beckett et de leurs projections chorégraphiques peut devenir le vecteur de pratiques d’inclusion et d’émancipation par l’école. Telle est la vocation du projet Meeting Beckett mené en 2016-2017 en partenariat avec le chorégraphe K Goldstein, avec les élèves en situation de handicap d’un dispositif Ulis (Unité localisée pour l’inclusion scolaire) et ceux d’une classe de 5ème. Il s’agit enfin de se demander dans quelle mesure les pratiques artistiques peuvent susciter de nouveaux gestes professionnels à l’école et initier une dynamique inclusive, capable de faire une place à chacun et chacune au sein de la société. / This research analyses the relationship of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) to dance and the relationship of two contemporary choreographers Dominique Dupuy (1930-) and Maguy Marin (1951-) to his works. The first part shows that Samuel Beckett was influenced by the modern dance he discovered between the two World Wars. His writing became more gestural and his discourse more political. Thus, to the healthy and glorious bodies promoted by the Nazi arts, he opposed in his first theatre the vulnerable bodies weakened by old age and disabilities, those of men whom the Third Reich wanted to make superfluous. In 1953, Lucky's dance in Waiting for Godot is a way of telling the unnamable of this violence. In 1981, the dance of Quad brings back the ghosts of the past to prevent the return of the worst. How to say? Dance, an art of the "non word", is part of this research that runs through Samuel Beckett's work. What one can't talk about is what one has to dance about. Secondly, this study shows how Samuel Beckett's works induce dances in which vulnerable beings resist and call for care. Dancing with Happy days, Act Without Words I and Worstward Ho allows Dominique Dupuy to question the possibilities of old age and transform its representations. Starting with Endgame, Maguy Marin wrote May B in 1981, a choreography miles apart from high-performance dance, which makes disabilities visible. Her work offers an updated reading of Samuel Beckett's work that takes into consideration the condition of disabled persons and allows us to envision the possibility of a more inclusive society. The last part shows that an ethical reading of Samuel Beckett's works and their choreographic projections can become the vector of inclusion practices and emancipation at school. This is the vocation of the Meeting Beckett project conducted in 2016-2017 in partnership with choreographer K Goldstein, with disabled pupils from an Ulis (Unité localisée pour l'inclusion scolaire) and 5th graders. Finally, we need to ask ourselves to what extent artistic practices can encourage new professional gestures at school and initiate an inclusive dynamic, capable of giving a place for everyone in society.

[pt] Esta pesquisa investiga a contemporaneidade da obra do escritor irlandês Samuel Beckett. A investigação privilegia três eixos, em três ensaios que articulam aspectos historiográficos, filosóficos e cênicos. O primeiro ensaio pensa de que forma a poética do tempo em Beckett participa do debate atual sobre o contemporâneo. O segundo ensaio, voltado para a produção televisiva de Beckett e atentando em especial às leituras que dela fez Gilles Deleuze, reflete sobre a produção de um pensamento entre, sobre ecos e ressonâncias geradas por este encontro. Por fim, o terceiro ensaio explora a recepção norteamericana da obra de Beckett, a partir da criação cênica e performática desenvolvida em parcerias com o diretor Alan Schneider, nas montagens de Not I e Rockaby, e com grupo Mabou Mines/NY, nas adaptações dos textos não teatrais The lost ones, Company, e Worstward Ho. / [en] This research investigates the contemporary vigor of Samuel Beckett s work. It moves along three main paths, in three essays where historiographical, philosophical and scenic aspects are articulated. The first essay reflects on how Beckett s poetics of time participates in the current debate on the contemporary. The second, focusing on Beckett s plays for television and paying special attention to Gilles Deleuze s readings of it, reflects on the concept of thinking in between, on echoes and resonances generated by this powerful encounter. Finally, the third essay explores the North American reception of Beckett s work, attending to the scenic and performative creations developed in partnership with director Alan Schneider, in the productions of Not I and Rockaby, and with the Mabou Mines Group/NY, in their adaptions of The lost ones, Company, and Worstward Ho.