The question of multiple identities in Samuel Beckett's works

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 16 / 20, University of Rennes 2, language: English, abstract: Ce mémoire traite des identités plurielles et de l'entre-deux culturel dans les oeuvres de Samuel Beckett. The void has been a great source of inspiration for Samuel Barclay Beckett and his critics who tend to take into account the characteristics of his mind rather than his writings. Such a deconstructionist discourse on negative identity is redundant but also contradictory. This study aims at exploring the fundamental question of multiple identities in Samuel Beckett's fictions and dramas, particularly The Unnamable from the trilogy, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape and other relevant works. As a novelist, playwright and translator, Beckett can be said to be part of a revolutionary literature. His rejection and exploitation of the literary tradition make him an ambivalent writer. The problem of singularity regarding his works is crucial in the stabilization of identity. Moreover, the lack of a major theme becomes an obstacle to the definition of such works. The representation of these multiple identities will be analyzed in order to elucidate the following inquiry: To what extent does Beckett's texts shed light on the seminal notions of rootlessness and cultural in-betweenness as well as on the rejection of identification through self-exploration and radical experimentation? A certain number of critical readings will be used to discuss Beckett's place in literature through his characters' apparent lack of attachment to any tradition. Does literature have a function in the formation of identity? What sort of renovation does the Beckettian texts offer? It will be first noted that his borrowings from the French and Irish traditions coupled with his aloofness to them are indicators of the complexity of his mode of communication which is itself predicated on individual and conventional systems of discourse. By means of exploring the essential antagonisms that departure and return represent, this study will attempt to identify the literary forms of identity and apprehend the constant redefinition of the self whose ambiguous nature have to be examined in the light of the paradox between multiplicity and reduction. How are marginalization and alterity experienced in the author's post-colonial writings? Beckett's bilingual experience via the relationship between the man and his work will complement this research. [...]