Storytelling in Beckett’s collected shorter plays

Exposé Philosophie & littérature Littérature

Date de publication :

25/07/2007

Langue :

Anglais

Format :

.doc

Nombre de pages :

6 pages

Niveau :

avancé

Consulté :

1 fois

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Sommaire :

Sommaire

The process of reduction inherent in Beckett's narration : his tendency to annihilate -or, at least, to minimize and fragment- both his story and his storyteller's self
The necessity for the Beckettian narrator to tell a story -a deeply human need indeed
The psychological aspect of storytelling in Beckett's Shorter Plays, defining this process as a way for the Beckettian narrator to keep at a distance from a harsh reality -narration as evasion

Résumé :

"The exposition of the story and its communication by suitable means of estrangement constitute the main business of the theatre; everything hangs on the story; it is the heart of the theatrical performance" (Bertolt Brecht, A Short Organum for the Theatre). Indeed, in beckett's collected shorter plays, it seems that the newest convention for expressing psychological inwardness on stage appears to be the so-called technique of storytelling: narrative suddenly becomes drama. This really marks a break with the former unique accepted theatrical convention for revealing a character's hidden thoughts: the soliloquy, a device meant to stop the external action so that internal mind could be expressed. storytelling is the art of portraying, in words, images, and sounds, what has happened in real or imagined events. To beckett, it represents the human effort to create order out of random experience. A story can be presented through action, dialogue and narration. It is an interactive experience between a teller and a listener. In the Beckettian drama, a deep tension exists between life and story on the one hand, and self and story on the other hand. Moreover, storytelling constitutes an intrinsic part of the central dramatic action itself. If we take into account the plainest definitions of the terms, narrative -or storytelling- is about something, whereas drama rather acts something. It is the same kind of basic difference you find between diegesis and mimesis.