The Crisis Of Memory And Body In Samuel Becketts Late Drama

Download or read book The Crisis of Memory and Body in Samuel Beckett's Late Drama written by Jehan Darwish Bseiso and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To speak of memory and body in Samuel Beckett's late theatre is to recognize the need for a new kind of vocabulary to define and describe these terms, as well a s alternative ways of relating them to one another. On his stage, memory and bod y are paired down to their rudimentary constituents; in Play (1963), Not I (1970 ), Footfalls (1976) and Rockaby (1982)--the four plays that I am focusing on, B eckett suggests models of representation and relation which reveal that new ways of understanding memory and body are necessary. In the first chapter of this study, I present my argument that the body and mem ory are in a productive crisis in Beckett's late drama. Following the introducti on, I contextualize my discussion within relevant strands of Beckett criticism i n the Prior Work section. I also reveal that memory and body are central keywor ds in Beckett criticism that have suffered at times from simplifying and general izing tendencies. Questioning the binaries that have typically organized their r elation, I claim that the body and memory in crisis reveals the interdependence of remembering-forgetting and mind-body. The second chapter discusses the two dramas Play and Not I in order to argue th at the fragmented bodies and memories in these two plays disclose a state of cri sis. In its emphasis on process, crisis prioritizes and sustains the search of t he characters. In my analysis, I focus on the features of what I identify as a b ody-in-crisis, and a memory-in-crisis. By locating a forward momentum in these p lays, I argue that despite their seemingly defeated contexts, the three disembod ied heads in Play and the pair of lips in Not I, are empowered to undergo a ceas eless quest for understanding and closure. In the third and final chapter of this study I read Footfalls and Rockaby in o rder to argue that the crisis of memory and body in these two plays allows the m ain characters, May and W, to confront their past and recreate it. I foreground the pervasiveness of the Beckettian body and its symbiosis with the mind. I disc uss how memory in crisis allows these characters to accept and alter their histo ries through the incorporation of forgetting and fiction. I underscore the means through which May and W's bodies and memories can be seen as expressive acts, t hus, enabling these characters to transform stasis ...