This essay discusses the relationship between the characters Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and the vernacular clowning tradition. The discussion is supported by analyzing similarities between Waiting for Godot and Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of grotesque realism as it is presented in his work Rabelais and His World, as well as elements of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte and 20th century silent movie comedy. The essay concludes that Beckett was considerably influenced by vernacular comic elements and utilised these influences in his play Waiting for Godot in order to question the high level of artificiality in Modernist literature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-32471 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Rönne, Nanna Bjørg Flensborg |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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