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Samuel Beckett's negative narrative and its historicity: towards a critical historicism

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dc.contributorMcNaughton, James
dc.contributorWittman, Emily
dc.contributorLevine, Daniel
dc.contributor.advisorMcNaughton, James
dc.contributor.authorLu, Xinyu
dc.contributor.otherUniversity of Alabama Tuscaloosa
dc.date.accessioned2021-07-07T14:37:06Z
dc.date.available2021-07-07T14:37:06Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.descriptionElectronic Thesis or Dissertationen_US
dc.description.abstractThis thesis interprets Samuel Beckett’s negative narrative from a historicist point of view. Chapter One reconstructs the Viconian elements in Beckett’s early critical work, “Dante … Bruno . Vico .. Joyce.” Beckett’s Viconian interpretation of the overlap between historicity and individuality in Joyce’s narrative forecasts Beckett's own narrative experiments. Chapter Two explores Beckett’s aesthetic construction of non-identity in Three Novels. The negativity is oriented in the post-traumatic experience of Beckett’s narrators. As their psychological and physiological conditions degenerate, their narrations become increasingly abstract in the temporospatial structure, morphology, and causation, but remain concrete in representing worsening corporeal experience through the stream of consciousness. The overlap between concretion and abstraction turns the corporeal experience into a signifier that potentially signifies various possible historical conditions. Chapter Three seeks the perfection of Adorno’s historicist interpretation of Beckett’s narrative with the readings by Badiou and McNaughton. Adorno initiates a historicist reading of Beckett. However, Adorno’s historicist reading potentially contains nihilism that contradicts Adorno’s dialectics of history. Badiou liberates the voidness and abstraction in Beckett’s narrative from nihilism, and he redefines it as an intellectual tendency to find the generic knowledge. McNaughton’s reading of Endgame reveals its concrete historicity by focusing on language and rhetoric form in Beckett’s narrative and thereby establishes an immediate connection between Beckett’s narrative and historicity. In this way, Beckett’s historicist interpretation becomes independent of a conceptual mediator and retains the priority of historicity.en_US
dc.format.extent122 p.
dc.format.mediumelectronic
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.otheru0015_0000001_0003823
dc.identifier.otherLu_alatus_0004M_14436
dc.identifier.urihttp://ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/7902
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Alabama Libraries
dc.relation.hasversionborn digital
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Electronic Theses and Dissertations
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Libraries Digital Collections
dc.rightsAll rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated.en_US
dc.subjectLiterature
dc.titleSamuel Beckett's negative narrative and its historicity: towards a critical historicismen_US
dc.typethesis
dc.typetext
etdms.degree.departmentUniversity of Alabama. Department of English
etdms.degree.disciplineEnglish
etdms.degree.grantorThe University of Alabama
etdms.degree.levelmaster's
etdms.degree.nameM.A.

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