“A Step Towards Silence”: Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable and the Problem of Following the Stranger

Marais, Mike

Title: “A Step Towards Silence”: Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable and the Problem of Following the Stranger
Creator: Marais, Mike
Date Issued: 2016
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
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Journal of Literary Studies
Relation: 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.
Relation: 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

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