PPT on Beckett Flashcards
religious context of Beckett’s upbringing
- born in Dublin into an Anglo-Irish protestant family
- Rise in republicanism in Ireland at this point
- division and religious conflict rife in Ireland
Beckett’s early career
- recieved a BA in French and Italian from trinity college Dublin in 1927
- moved to Paris in 1928, became a Reader in English at a university in Paris
- met and befriended James Joyce
- after breifly returning to Dublin in 1930-31 he travelled extensively across europe
socio-political situation of europe in the 1930s
- rise of fascism
- advent of WWII
- greater division and hatred which led to the rising threat of destruction and ‘the giving away of rights’ referenced in wfg
Beckett during the war (5)
- Paris occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940: Beckett remained in Paris and joined the underground resistance
- Beckett Resistance group was split up by the Gestapo and Beckett fled to unoccupied France
- while waiting for the war to end Beckett worked as an agricultural labourer
- in 1945 he returned ro ireland to join the red cross and was immediately sent back to france to serve as an interpreter in a hospital in saint lo
- finally he came back to paris and was awarded the croix de guerre for his work in france
Beckett after the war
- settled with Suzanne Descheavaux Dumesnuil and began his most prolific period of work
- in 1951 beckett published Molloy- his first novel and due to its critical success his published bought two other unpublished novels and the play en attendant godot
en attandant godot: when + where did it premiere? reaction of audience
- premiered in the theatre du babylon, paris 1953
- reviews generally poisitive but there were some different reactions including a group of middle class parisians starting a protest upon hearing lucky’s speech in act one and therefore the performance was aborted
waiting for godot: when/ where did it premiere?
-first performed in the Arts Theatre London 1955
who directed the first performance
peter hall
who did the decor in the first performance
peter snow
changes in en attandant godot to waiting for godot
- english theatre was heavily censored in the 50s therefore the ‘erection’ dialouge was removed and ‘fartov’ became ‘popov’
- through the translation from french to English many aspects of the play became more ambiguous. Beckett continued to revisit Godot and over the years it became increasingly indefinite
Actor Peter Bull (who played Pozzo in the London debut of WFG on the audiences reaction
Waves of hostility came whirling over the footlights, and the mass exodus, which was to form such a feature of the run of the piece, started quite soon after the curtain had risen. The audible groans were also fairly disconcerting
what happened at the inaugural evening standard theatre awards in 1955
- certain critics threatened to resign if godot won ‘best new play’
- it did not win that award but instead won the ‘most controversial play of the year’- an award that has not been awarded since
camus on form and chaos + source
camus’ three responses to the unreasonable world
‘there will be a new form… will… admit chaos, and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else…To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist.’
Camus on the creation of the world
The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day
