Dr Emilie Morinemilie.morin@york.ac.uk

SAMUEL BECKETT’S DRAMA AND BEYOND

Spring 2014

If critics have long considered Samuel Beckett one of the most important playwrights of the twentieth century, his influence upon subsequent developments in British and Irish drama has remained difficult to pinpoint. In this module, we will discuss Beckett’s drama and developments beyond Beckett, charting the development of non-naturalistic trends in a wide range of dramatic texts. We will begin by considering the influences shaping Beckett’s rejection of realism, paying particular attention to the ambivalent relationship that his work maintains to the drama of the Irish Literary Revival, and we will end by thinking about the ways in which qualities commonly associated with the idea of ‘the Beckettian’ are echoed in a range of British and Irish plays from the past three decades.

Our seminar programme will be divided into two parts. In the first four seminars, we will focus on a range of plays written by Beckett, from absurdist plays such as Waiting for Godot and Endgame to short dramatic texts whose status as plays is open to question. Waiting for Godot and Endgame were heralded as groundbreaking in the 1950s, and Beckett’s desolate landscapes responded to the anxieties of the post-war period, as their presentation of man’s relentless search for meaning in a meaningless universe echoed contemporaneous philosophical concerns. In plays of the 1960s and 1970s, Beckett moved away from an absurdist aesthetic and experimented with the boundaries of dramatic expression, showing a particular fascination with the possibilities of the voice, dramatic monologue and technology. His investigation of the modalities of perception and meaning had a determining influence on subsequent developments in Irish and British drama – an influence that can be traced in the work of playwrights as varied as Harold Pinter, Sarah Kane, or Marina Carr. The second half of the module will lead us to think about Beckett’s legacy, and we will look at plays by Tom Murphy, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Frank McGuinness, Brendan Behan, debbie tucker green, Sarah Kane and Tim Crouch (the corpus is extremely varied and details are below). We will discuss these playwrights’ representations of linguistic, sensory and cognitive breakdowns, elements which evoke the transformative effect that Beckett had on dramatic form, and we will consider the motives shaping their engagement with a non-naturalistic aesthetic.

No previous experience of studying drama is required – all you need to approach the module materials is an interest in the topics and the authors; everything else starts from there.

All plays by Beckett may be found in his Complete Dramatic Works (Faber) – you must buy this collection. All other texts are available from Amazon and online sellers (Amazon marketplace, Abebooks, etc); you should find plenty of inexpensive second-hand copies. No particular recommendations as regards editions unless otherwise indicated. All core texts will be in the Key Texts section of the Library.

When indicated below, primary texts will be available as handouts. Photocopies of critical essays or links towards online resources will accompany seminars as appropriate.

READING LIST AND SCHEDULE OF SEMINARS

Week 1: No seminar

Week 2: Beckett and the Irish RevivalSamuel Beckett, Rough for Theatre I and The Old Tune [adaptation of a play by Robert Pinget, La Manivelle]W.B. Yeats, The Cat and the Moon and Purgatory (handout provided at the start of term)Lady Augusta Gregory, The Workhouse Ward (handout provided at the start of term)J.M. Synge, Riders to the Sea and In the Shadow of the Glen

Week 3: history and oblivionSamuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot and EndgameTheodor Adorno, ‘Trying to Understand Endgame’, New German Critique 26 (1982): 119-50 [to be read/downloaded from JStor]Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock (available in Three Dublin Plays, Faber – but any edition is fine)

Week 4: voice, recording, technologySamuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape; All That Fall; Embers; Words and Music; Cascando

Week 5: monologue and experimentSamuel Beckett, Happy Days; Not I; Footfalls; RockabyGilles Deleuze, ‘The Exhausted’ (online; to be read from JStor)

Week 6: Reading week – no seminar

Week 7: memory and storytellingTom Murphy, BailegangaireMartin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of LeenaneW.B. Yeats, Cathleen Ni Houlihan (handout provided)

Week 8: landscapes of the mindSarah Kane, Crave (handout provided)Conor McPherson, Port Authority (handout provided)

Week 9: narratives of incarcerationBrendan Behan, The Quare FellowFrank McGuinness, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me

Week 10: narrative and indeterminacydebbie tucker green, randomTim Crouch, England

Some useful starting points:Beckett:Ackerley, Chris, and S.E. Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel

Beckett: A Reader’s Guide to hisWorks, Life, and Thought***Gontarski, S.E., ed., A Companion to Samuel Beckett (Blackwell)Maude, Ulrika, Beckett, Technology, and the BodyMorin, Emilie, Samuel Beckett and the Problem of IrishnessOppenheim, Lois, ed., Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies Pattie, David, The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett***Pilling, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Book and e-book***Roche, Anthony, Contemporary Irish Drama: From Beckett to McGuinness [2009 ed.]***Tonning, Erik, Samuel Beckett’s Abstract Drama: Works for Stage and

Screen 1962-1985***Uhlmann, Anthony, ed., Beckett in ContextWatt, Stephen, Beckett and Contemporary Irish Writing

If you want to know more about Beckett’s life, the reference work by James Knowlson (Damned to Fame) is inexpensive on Amazon and can often be found in second-hand bookshops. Gerry Dukes’s short biography of Beckett is also a good starting point.

British and Irish drama:Acheson, James, ed., British and Irish Drama since 1960Grene, Nicholas, The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel, Innes, Christopher, Modern British Drama: The Twentieth CenturyKritzer, Amelia Howe, Political Theatre in Post-Thatcher Britain: New Writing, 1995-2005Hans-Thies Lehmann, Post-dramatic theatreLonergan, Patrick, Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger EraLuckhurst, Mary, ed., A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama, 1880-2005Morash, Christopher, A History of Irish Theatre, 1601-2000Murray, Christopher, Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: A Mirror up to Nation

Richards, Shaun, The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama [e-book, accessible via library website]Roche, Anthony, Contemporary Irish DramaSierz, Aleks, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama TodayTrotter, Mary, Modern Irish TheatreWorth, Katharine, The Irish Drama of Europe from Yeats to BeckettWilson, Michael, Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Storytellers and Their Art

Online resources:The online databases available through the Metalib Gateway of the Library give you access to a large number of critical articles on modern drama (all can be saved in pdf format). Periodicals relevant to this module include Modern Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Theatre Journal, The Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Comparative Drama, New Hibernia Review, Irish University Review, The Irish Studies Review, Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, The Irish Review, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, Contemporary Theatre Review: An International Journal, Journal of Modern British and American Drama, Performance Research...This is by no means a complete list.All of these periodicals can be accessed online, via JStor OR Project Muse OR via the Library catalogue and Yorsearch (in the latter case, you will need to type in the journal title, and then click on ‘find it! to access the relevant database).

Presentations:Each student will be asked to prepare and deliver a short presentation of no more than ten minutes in duration, dealing with one of the texts discussed. We will agree on a schedule of presentations at our first seminar in Week 2.