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Abstract
Waiting for Godot is not often presented as homologous with Beckett’s narrative fiction. However, a close consideration of the status of the boy(s) in the play shows that the drama text undermines the dichotomy between inner and outer world, which Beckett was addressing in comparable ways in his novels and art criticism.
Abstract
Recent developments in the critical arena indicate that scholars are showing a keen interest in tracing Samuel Beckett’s influence on, or presence in, the non-Western world. They focus on how the Beckettian oeuvre is translated and adapted in various corners of the world. This study aims to contribute to this trend by examining the adaptations of Waiting for Godot in Pakistan. It operates on two interconnected levels. First, it explores how the metaphor of Godot was employed to adapt to Pakistan’s political context. Second, it posits that the adaptable structure of Waiting for Godot empowers artists to mirror the audience’s worldview, resulting in one-of-a-kind interpretations that contest the Eurocentric perspective. The pliability of Beckettian oeuvre encourages diverse literary responses.
Abstract
Spectrality remains a key motif and metaphor in Beckett’s writing; many of his wandering and destitute creations seem on their way towards another kind of life, uncomfortably close to death, and remarkably close to the spirit world. This article outlines some of the paradoxes that surround Beckett’s relation to the ghost as a dramatic device; it emphasises how uneasily Beckett’s work sits within the tradition of the ghost play, and unravels some of the preoccupations and interests shaping Beckett’s treatment of dialogues with the dead.
Abstract
The woman’s wordless scream in Not I and Happy Days acts as a spectral-yet-embodied rendering of unspoken and apparently unspeakable sexual trauma. If trauma symptomology is itself a form of bodily haunting—the past intruding into the present—the wordless scream performs this phenomenon on Beckett’s stage, as a disruptive return of the repressed through the body itself. This essay explores how the performed scream returns embodied trauma to embodied expression in Not I and Happy Days, emphasising the voice as a simultaneously spectral yet profoundly corporeal force. It then examines the potential therapeutic effect of the scream in performance, drawing on a range of actor testimonies.
Abstract
This article examines the place of Beckett’s work amongst recent artworks sited at the Northern Irish border/ north of Ireland border. Using Dylan Quinn’s Fulcrum, the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival’s Walking for Waiting for Godot, and the collaborative community project Across and In-Between as key examples, I explore how Beckett’s work has become absorbed into the kinds of wider arts and political discourses—and indeed crises—that this border-site reflects. These projects share a concern for placing bodies at the border, asking us to see from the situation of the border, to trace its often-impalpable contours with the frail tools of words and bodies.
Focussing on Alexander Pope’s Dunciads and a wide selection of Lord Byron’s poems, Lahrsow shows that literary self-annotations rarely just explain a text. Rather, they multiply meanings and pit different voices against each other. Self-annotations serve to ambiguate the author’s self-presentation as well as the genre, tone, and overall interpretation of a text.
The study also examines how notes were employed for ‘social networking’ and how authors used self-annotations to address, and differentiate between, various groups of readerships.
Additionally, the volume sheds light on the wider literary and cultural context of self-annotations: How common were they during the long eighteenth century? What conventions governed them? And were they even read? The study hence combines literary analysis with insights into book history and the history of reading.
Focussing on Alexander Pope’s Dunciads and a wide selection of Lord Byron’s poems, Lahrsow shows that literary self-annotations rarely just explain a text. Rather, they multiply meanings and pit different voices against each other. Self-annotations serve to ambiguate the author’s self-presentation as well as the genre, tone, and overall interpretation of a text.
The study also examines how notes were employed for ‘social networking’ and how authors used self-annotations to address, and differentiate between, various groups of readerships.
Additionally, the volume sheds light on the wider literary and cultural context of self-annotations: How common were they during the long eighteenth century? What conventions governed them? And were they even read? The study hence combines literary analysis with insights into book history and the history of reading.