Samuel Beckett and the Death of Representation: Rockaby, Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstward Ho

Edward Colerick

doi:10.31648/10.31648/pl.5663

Published: 2020-12-011

No. 8 (2020)

Samuel Beckett and the Death of Representation: Rockaby, Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstward Ho

Edward Colerick

Prace Literaturoznawcze

Section: Case of the creator

https://doi.org/10.31648/10.31648/pl.5663

Abstract

The article explores not only the link between Samuel Beckett’s final two novellas and the late drama but also seeks to demonstrate the author’s intent on stripping away the symbolism and imagery within his work in order to expose a life lived through the prism of representation; and, finally, to use his art to suggest something of the ‘real’ beneath the representational world. In this way the article demonstrates that the apotheosis of Beckett’s entire oeuvre is to reduce his narrative and dramas to a single work which finds its most comprehensive embodiment in his final novella: Worstward Ho.

Keywords:

Representation, Pattern, Archetype, Worsening

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Colerick, E. (2020). Samuel Beckett and the Death of Representation: Rockaby, Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstward Ho. Prace Literaturoznawcze, (8), 161–172. https://doi.org/10.31648/10.31648/pl.5663

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