Title: COHERENCE OF INCONGRUITY: BECKETT'S DRAMATIC STRUCTURE
Abstract:Samuel Beckett is generally esteemed a great innovator of 20th-century theatre for several reasons and no doubt with justification: there is hardly an aspect of traditional theatre he has not challeng...Samuel Beckett is generally esteemed a great innovator of 20th-century theatre for several reasons and no doubt with justification: there is hardly an aspect of traditional theatre he has not challenged, questioned, parodied or destroyed in one or more of his theatrical pieces. Even the most conservative of his plays lack almost everything a traditional dramatic convention requires, including plot, distinctive characters with individual features, coherent and meaningful dialogues, a slice of reality, a theme that is exposed, developed and (in most cases) solved in the course of the dramatic action. Instead, we are confronted with fragmented images in a surrealistically bare, empty, unnatural world, as if in a dream, or rather, in a nightmare. What makes these pieces dramas then? Beckett's works cannot be approached with traditional expectations in mind and the organic forces working within them are to be sought elsewhere than in the story-line, the dramatic conflict or the character development. The lack of these conventional features leaves one with very little left; still, Beckett succeeded in developing his own tools, in fact he created his own special kind of theatre which he constantly improved and perfected in his oeuvre with a single-minded concentration and admirable consistency. In this essay, I propose to examine Beckett's stage world from the point of view of dramatic structure. For the examination I have chosen three very different pieces that span almost the whole of his creative career in the theatre: Waiting for Godot, Play and Rockaby.Read More
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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