Trying Again, Failing Again: Samuel Beckett and the Sequel Play

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-272
Author(s):  
Hannah Simpson
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Research Fellow ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Junior Research ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Post War

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot has spawned several unauthorized sequel plays, which see Godot arrive on stage in 1960s Yugoslavia, 1980s Ireland, 1990s North America, and early 2000s Japan. The sequel play is a largely ignored phenomenon in literary scholarship, with the sequel form itself routinely dismissed as a derivative and inevitably disappointing text. Yet the sequel also re-situates and re-evaluates the original text, and its reiterative nature aptly parallels the paradox of non-ending in Beckett’s original Waiting for Godot. Focusing on four unauthorized stage sequels to Beckett’s play – Miodrag Bulatović’s Godo je došao (Godot Has Arrived, 1966), Alan Titley’s Tagann Godot (Godot Arrives, 1987), Daniel Curzon’s Godot Arrives (1999), and Minoru Betsuyaku’s Yattekita Godot (Godot Has Come, 2007) – this article examines how these sequels rework the cultural logic of Godot’s arrival to their own critical and political ends. These playwrights draw on the very recursive, even frustrating, nature of the sequel form itself as an exegetic framework, reproducing the trope of non-ending that characterizes Beckett’s own work. Hannah Simpson is the Rosemary Pountney Junior Research Fellow in British and European Drama at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. She is currently working on two forthcoming Beckett-related monographs: Witnessing Pain: Samuel Beckett and Post-War Francophone Theatre and Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance.

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.

Pathologie Infantile

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 738-739
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Original Text ◽  
French School ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Post War

The first edition of this textbook, published during the difficult years 1943-1946, has long since been out of date. With the participation of some 40 contributing authors the 3 original editors, whose names are well known to pediatricians everywhere, have extensively revised their original text and have incorporated the principal advances gleaned during the highly productive post-war period. Their 2 volumes cover quite thoroughly the subject matter of clinical pediatrics and may be regarded as truly representative of the modern French school.

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.

Beckett, Samuel Barclay (1906–89)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan (Amy) Tang
Keyword(s):  
James Joyce ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Dramatic Works ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Samuel Barclay Beckett is widely considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Born in Ireland and living in France for half of his life, he wrote prose, dramatic works, poems, and criticism in both English and French. He started to write fiction after he met James Joyce and other intellectuals in Paris in the 1920s. His research on languages, literature and philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris provided a solid basis for his works. His popularity grew rapidly after the Second World War, particularly after the publication of his groundbreaking play, En attendant Godot (1953, Waiting for Godot), and his trilogy, Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951, Malone Dies), and L’innommable (1953, The Unnamable). He was not only a prolific modernist who innovated avant-garde prose, theatre, radio, television, and cinema; he also joined the French Resistance during the Second World War and the post-war reconstruction. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

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