- Title
- “A Step Towards Silence”: Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable and the Problem of Following the Stranger
- Creator
- Marais, Mike
- Date
- 2016
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144205
- Identifier
- vital:38320
- Identifier
- DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2016.1249617
- Description
- In this article, I argue that Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable evinces the kind of aesthetic ambivalence that Theodor Adorno, in Aesthetic Theory, ascribes to the artwork’s location both in and outside of society. By tracing the metaphors used in the narrator’s depiction of the act of narration, I demonstrate that this novel self-reflexively articulates and meditates on its ambivalent position in society. Thereafter, I relate the work’s suspicion of its medium, and therefore its estrangement from itself, to its critique of community’s norms of recognition, which are embedded in language. Finally, I reflect on the potential effect of the text’s aesthetic ambivalence on the reader.
- Format
- 16 pages, pdf
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Journal of Literary Studies, Marais, M., 2016. “A Step Towards Silence”: Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable and the Problem of Following the Stranger. Journal of Literary Studies, 32(4), pp.89-106., Journal of Literary Studies volume 32 number 4 89 106 November 2016 1753-5387
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Terms and Conditions statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
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Marais, Mike (Prof)
RU Department of Literary Studies in English
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | A Step Towards Silence.pdf | 665 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |