Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Graver
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Waiting For Godot

scholarly journals Register in Samuel Beckett’s Writings in English and French:

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-48
Author(s):  
Bentolhoda Nakhaei
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
English Version ◽  
French Version ◽  
Semantic Framework ◽  
Translation Analysis ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Stylistic Changes

Abstract Samuel Beckett, the Irish author and playwright was born in 1906 in County Dublin, Ireland and died in 1989, in Paris, France. From 1929 to 1989, Beckett wrote letters through which his life is depicted. His letters were published in the form of four volumes entitled as follows: volume I: 1929-1940 (published in 2009), volume II: 1941-1956 (published in 2011), volume III: 1957-1965 (published in 2014), and lastly, volume IV: 1966-1989 (published in 2016). These letters were later translated in French by the publishing house of Gallimard between 2014 and 2018. Within a morpho-semantic framework of analysis, one may wonder to what extent there exists stylistic affinities between his letters and his famous tragicomedy entitled Waiting for Godot (published in 1952). In other terms, are there constant, and/or shared stylistic units? To what extent has the register been changed from his letters to his play? How may the vocabulary, punctuation, and grammar differ from the English version of Waiting for Godot to the French version? Do these stylistic changes from English to French affect the notions of 20th-century man in the society in France? By drawing on certain theories of theoreticians in linguistics and translation studies such as Brian T. Fitch, Anthony Uhlmann, and Saeid Rahipour, this research seeks to present a linguistic and translation analysis of Beckett’s register in his four volumes of letters and English, and French versions of his play Waiting for Godot. Hence, this study aims to investigate the extent to which the Irish writer’s register has been differentiated in the corpus under study by the passage of time to suit the stylistic norms of 20th century in France and England.

The Chinese Translation of Samuel Beckett: A Critical History

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-295
Author(s):  
Bo Cao
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Translation Practice ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
History Of ◽  
Harsh Criticism ◽  
Second Period

In light of the relevant merits and defects of translation practice over sixty years, this article presents a critical history of the Chinese translation of the work of Samuel Beckett. The article argues that the history may be divided into two periods: the pre-1980 period and the post-1980 period, with China's reopening to the outside world in the late 1970s as the watershed. The first period is dominated by the politically propelled translation of Waiting for Godot and harsh criticism of Beckett as a ‘decadent’ author. The second period, characterized by a more complex aesthetic response, may be further divided into three stages: the first stage is marked by the pioneering Proust as a booklet on irrationalism and the debatable Collection of Samuel Beckett translated from French; the second stage by the annotated Complete Works of Samuel Beckett; the third stage by the scholastically motivated Letters of Samuel Beckett. In retrospect, the transition between the two periods is a dramatic one from political misreading to aesthetic appreciation. Or, rather, the progress of the Chinese translation since the turn of the twentieth century mirrors both the re-evaluation of Beckett as an innovative artist and the ‘inward turn’ of Chinese intellectual circles.

scholarly journals The Use of Response Tokens In Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Muhammad Izzul Islam ◽  
Murni Fidiyanti ◽  
Rezkiawati Nazaruddin
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Rich Description ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
Single Response

This study discusses the use of response tokens in Waiting for Godot written by Samuel Beckett. Specifically, it examines kinds and the functions of response tokens uttered by the main characters. This research uses descriptive approach to obtain rich description and to understand response tokens in Waiting for Godot. The data were taken form Vladimir's and Estragon's utterances. The key findings suggest that the types of response tokens in the drama are single response token, response token preceding expanded response, premodified response token, negative token and doublet and also triplet token. Meanwhile, the functions of response token include the function of continuers, acknowledgement, newsmarker, change-of-activity, assessement and brief question token.

scholarly journals Syntactic Deconstruction of Beckett’s Dramatic Text: A Transitivity Analysis of Waiting for Godot

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Ijaz Asghar Bhatti ◽  
Musarrat Azher ◽  
Shahid Abbas
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Computational Tool ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
The World ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Dramatic Text ◽  
Linguistic Approach

This study examines the dominant elements of Transitivity (Ideational meaning) of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The analysis of data was conducted by using computational tool, UAM Corpus Tool (UAMTC). The study has found that Beckett’s dramatic text has a considerable amount of Material processes going on in the world of the play but these processes are less directed to a Goal and are even agentless too. The processes are also not spatially and temporally situated. The characters are out of time in Waiting for Godot (Esslin, 1980). The text is a linguistic paradox; lexically simple but structurally complex. The fragmented syntax of the play corresponds with the chaotic existence of man. The meaninglessness of human life has been conveyed through broken language. It is due to these qualities that the play is able to make a mark on the minds of its readers. The present study has explored of the possibility of reconciliation between literary and linguistic approach to the study of literary texts in general and modern drama in particular.

Epilogue: What the Irish Left – Sean O’casey, Samuel Beckett and Lorraine Hansberry’s the Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Cannon Harris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Sean O'casey ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Lorraine Hansberry ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Left

The epilogue considers the impact of Irish playwrights on an American left that had been decimated by anti-Communist persecution. Just prior to the 1956 New York premiere of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist Waiting for Godot, O’Casey made his Broadway comeback with the expressionist Lockout play Red Roses For Me. The lesbian African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, whose work engages with both O’Casey and Beckett, suspends the antirealist effects of these two different Irish premieres within her 1964 play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, which chronicles the crises faced by a group of New York progressives in the aftermath of McCarthyism. Hansberry separates O’Casey and Beckett’s most promising techniques from their masculinist foundations, re-deploying them in order to help Sidney Brustein – and, by extension, the white left – resolve the impasse in which they have been trapped, by abandoning a definition of struggle based on a self-defeating attachment to a heroic masculinity which was never attainable.

Samuel Beckett and Irish Scenography

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-156
Author(s):  
Anna McMullan ◽  
Trish McTighe
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
The Core ◽  
Theatre Production ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Formative Years

This essay offers some glimpses of the parallel histories of Beckett and Irish scenography, and explores how they have impacted on each other. In particular, we investigate the intersections between Beckett and theatre in Dublin in the 1920s and 1930s, considering whether the staging innovations of the Dublin theatres of Beckett's formative years helped to shape his scenographic imagination. We then focus on Louis le Brocquy's designs for the Gate Theatre production of Waiting for Godot in 1988, which went on to constitute the core of their Beckett Festival, launched in 1991, with various revivals and national and international tours since then.

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