DOCSLIB.ORG

"Almost Lifeless, Like the Teller": the Instructive Performances of Samuel Beckett's Self-Aware Novels

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
“ALMOST LIFELESS, LIKE THE TELLER”: THE INSTRUCTIVE PERFORMANCES OF SAMUEL BECKETT’S SELF-AWARE NOVELS A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Garth Jerome Sabo May, 2011 Thesis written by Garth Jerome Sabo B.A., John Carroll University, 2009 M.A., Kent State University, 2011 Approved by _________Claire Culleton_________, Advisor _________Ronald Corthell________, Chair, Department of English _________Timothy Moerland______, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 “That which lurks behind, be it something or nothing” Chapter One………………………………………………………………………...……11 Transparency – Beckett and the Text as Art Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………………...41 Physicality – Beckett and the Text as Object Chapter Three…………………………………………………...............………………..70 Scatology – Beckett and the Text as Fart Chapter Four……………………………………………………………………..………98 Implications – Beckett and the Reader Notes………………………………………………………..…………………………..109 References……………………………………………………..….……….……………123 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Claire Culleton for her assistance in the composition and revision of this thesis. Her words of encouragement and attentiveness were invaluable in the process of this project’s completion. I would also like to thank Dr. Tammy Clewell and Dr. Robert Trogdon for serving on my committee and offering their tacit support through the course of my efforts. Thanks are also due to Dr. Jeanne Colleran, without whom I never would have been introduced to the works of Samuel Beckett. Were it not for the studies of Krapp’s Last Tape and Waiting for Godot she prompted, this thesis would have been impossible. On a personal note, I would like to thank Michelle Rigsby for the support and solidarity she offered. Michelle put up with months of Beckett anecdotes far better than I ever could have anticipated, and I am deeply indebted to her for that. iv INTRODUCTION “THAT WHICH LURKS BEHIND, BE IT SOMETHING OR NOTHING” In the field of Samuel Beckett scholarship, considerable attention has been paid to the apparent meaninglessness of the Beckettian text. Hannah Copeland has stated that “it is the absence, the nothingness at the center of being, that [Beckett] wishes to reveal in his art.”1 Similarly, in his introduction Beckett’s Dying Words, Christopher Ricks asserts that in the Beckettian text, “there is nothing to compare with the ultimate asylum; there is no substitute for nothing.”2 Dirk van Hulle, writing on the topic of Beckett’s manuscript practices, also suggests that Beckett’s writing practices “implied the know-how to create and carefully refine his composition in order to admit the decomposition to become part of it.”3 Even Beckett was willing, even eager, to position himself as an author seeking to say nothing – or, more appropriately, Nothing. In a letter to Axel Kaun, a well respected Beckett critic, Beckett wrote on 9 July 1937: It is indeed getting more and more difficult, even pointless, for me to write in formal English. And more and more my language appears to me like a veil which one has to tear apart in order to get to those things (or the nothingness) lying behind it…It is to be hoped the time will come, thank God, in some circles it already has, when language is best used where it is 1 2 most efficiently abused. Since we cannot dismiss it all at once, at least we do not want to leave anything undone that may contribute to its disrepute. To drill one hole after another into it until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through – I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.4 Beckett goes on to note that “[on] the road toward [a] very desirable literature of the non- word, some form of nominalistic irony can of course be a necessary phase. However, it does not suffice if the game loses some of its sacred solemnity. Let it cease altogether!”5 Beckett thus established for himself the explicit goal of the non-statement; that is, Beckett’s “literature of the non-word”6 limits itself to the face value of its terms. No deeper meaning underlies the Beckett text, owing to Beckett’s suspicion that there is simply nothing lurking behind the veil of language to seep through. It would be a mistake, however, to misinterpret the critical canon and the artist’s own statements as implying an entirely empty experience with the Beckettian text. In the absence of that which lurks behind, Beckett’s writing obsesses with that which cannot be denied – the text itself, the words and performances with which Beckett’s reader interacts moment by moment. The literature of the non-word is still a literature, and as such it continues to embody and follow certain structural constants and conceits. These structural and artistic elements of Beckett’s literature avoid the total deconstruction of the text by asserting that the meaning is wholly contained in the moment of reading; Beckett certainly does not point beyond the text to any deeper meaning, but that is due in part to his satisfaction with the immediate text to convey an artistic experience. In deference to 3 this, Beckett’s works abound in moments that are clearly intended to reify the exact moment of interaction between reader and text. Beckett’s intention at these points seems to be twofold. First, the text supplements itself in meta- or extraliterary ways. That is, in addition to the thematic concerns relevant to the novels’ artistic wholeness, the texts include performative gestures whereby the reader’s response to that which is written is acted out physically or conceptually within the novel. This leads to the second apparent intention of Beckett’s reification of the immediate within the text, which is to instruct the reader in the development of a highly specific, rigid response to novel as intended by Beckett. Beckett may intend for his reader to arrive at Nothing, but it is nonetheless a distinct Nothing he pursues. The text, thus, exerts exacting control over the reader’s possible interpretation and response to it, such that the outward unintelligibility of the Beckett text belies its rigorously enforced authorial presence and control. It is in light of this that I offer the term “instructive performances,” and all reasonable variations thereof, in reference to Samuel Beckett’s early novels. Throughout this thesis, it is my intention to trace and explain the influence of these instructive performances upon the Beckettian text. In so doing, I offer an alternate understanding of Beckett’s non-word. Rather than an empty experience, Beckett is profoundly motivated by the creation of an impossibly rich interaction with the text; he only differs from traditional literature in that he restricts this richness to the immediate moment of reading, with no intention of making a statement that reaches beyond the instant of the text. This awareness of the immediacy of the moment of reading results in a relationship with the texts that transcends the abstract and deconstructionist understanding traditionally 4 proposed by Beckett scholarship. Beckett’s moments of instructive performance in the novels encourage his readers to become subsumed in their progressive experience with his writing. There are certainly moments where Beckett forcefully alienates his reader from the text, but they are offset by the wealth of examples wherein he actively and overtly pursues an intimate relationship with the audience of his novels. I focus specifically on Beckett’s novels because while the issue of self-aware performance in Beckett’s drama has already been addressed admirably, it has been at the expense of a serious contemplation of the performative elements of the novels. In Samuel Beckett’s Self-Referential Drama: The Sensitive Chaos, Shimon Levy’s excellent book on this subject in Beckett’s plays, Levy offers an explanatory example of the typical critics’ dismissal of the novels. Levy asserts, “In Beckett’s prose and poetry a constant quest for the embryonic presence of a self, perhaps as proxy for his own self, can easily be detected; but in his dramatic works the characters need actors as actual ‘proxies’ to provide the necessary vehicle to carry the self.”7 Apparently, Beckett’s prose is ignored due to its self-explanatory clearness in favor of the more attractive complexity of the drama. While it is not my intention to refute this positive impression of Beckett’s dramatic canon, it is a reductive limitation of scholarship to suggest that the novels serve a merely ancillary role in the body of Beckett’s work. “While allowing for methodological modification pertaining to the particular character of the [dramatic] medium dealt with,” Shimon Levy suggests “that self-reference, reflexivity, medium- awareness and notions of an implied author, as well as audience, are all manifestations of a unified artistic course – a course that ensues from Beckett’s expressed artistic self- 5 consciousness.”8 Levy’s examination of these concepts in the drama is inspired and suggests a productive vein for further contemplation in the field of dramatic analysis. However, Levy himself asserts the need for “methodological modification” when dealing with different artistic media, and it is for that reason that the discussion of Beckett’s self- aware novels can no longer be included as a mere subset of the drama. Indeed, Beckett’s paradoxical inclusion of performative elements in the novel, a traditionally non- performative genre, establishes the analysis of this theme as long overdue and profoundly resonant within the scope of Beckett studies. In the interest, then, of applying to the novels the same interest in self-aware performance exemplified by Levy’s book on the drama, I deal at length with Beckett’s first five major novels in this thesis.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ian Watt, the Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Chatto & Windus 1957; Rep
    Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Chatto & Windus 1957; rep. Univ. of California Press 1957). Note: this copy has been made from a PDF version of the 1957 California UP edition. The footnotes in that editon have been transposed to endnotes here and the page-numbers have been omitted. Chapter I: Realism and the Novel Form THERE are still no wholly satisfactory answers to many of the general questions which anyone interested in the early eighteenth-century novelists and their works is likely to ask: Is the novel a new literary form? And if we assume, as is commonly done, that it is, and that it was begun by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, how does it differ from the prose fiction of the past, from that of Greece, for example, or that of the Middle Ages, or of seventeenth-century France? And is there any reason why these differences appeared when and where they did? Such large questions are never easy to approach, much less to answer, and they are particularly difficult in this case because Defoe, Richardson and Fielding do not in the usual sense constitute a literary school. Indeed their works show so little sign of mutual influence and are so different in nature that at first sight it appears that our curiosity about the rise of the novel is unlikely to find any satisfaction other than the meagre one afforded by the terms ‘genius’ and ‘accident’, the twin faces on the Janus of the dead ends of literary history. We cannot, of course, do without them: on the other hand there is not much we can do with them.
    [Show full text]
  • In Search of Enlightenment by Reading Samuel Beckett’S Waiting for Godot
    LITERARIA An International Journal of New Literature Across the World ISSN: 2229-4600 VOL. 5, No. 1-2, JAN-DEC 2015 In Search of Enlightenment by Reading Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot SYED ISMYL MAHMOOD RIZVI Patna University, Patna ABSTRACT Beckett’s philosophical indebtedness has long been recognised – especially in conjunction with Dante, Descartes and Geulincx. In this article, I examine Beckettian universal values of Enlightenment, which will be exposed as self-serving mystifications that rationalize and instrumentalize the meaning of life. In this context, the awareness of the Enlightenment nature of Beckett’s writing in Waiting for Godot will be analysed along with the freedom appeal of his reader as he strives to attain the enlightenment. ‘For enlightenment, all that is needed is freedom.’ (Kant 1991 [1784]) Suppose an individual in the world which is a hard shell that he attempts to toss it away, but for what; to think beyond it, and to relocate him beyond it in order to attain enlightenment. Whenever he looks above into the sky, the high sky, the clouds, the flying birds, the stars, the moon, the sun and the cosmos, those make him to forget the hard shell for a while until his eyes fell upon it and he is recaptured. Still into the pupil of his eyes he is reflecting the cosmos. This energy within him, within anyone has vitality and potentiality to reflect the cosmos, and to look beyond the hard shell. Let’s say that he has had an enlightenment experience. Enlightenment is a fact. It is the Truth itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Samuel Beckett's Peristaltic Modernism, 1932-1958 Adam
    ‘FIRST DIRTY, THEN MAKE CLEAN’: SAMUEL BECKETT’S PERISTALTIC MODERNISM, 1932-1958 ADAM MICHAEL WINSTANLEY PhD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE MARCH 2013 1 ABSTRACT Drawing together a number of different recent approaches to Samuel Beckett’s studies, this thesis examines the convulsive narrative trajectories of Beckett’s prose works from Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1931-2) to The Unnamable (1958) in relation to the disorganised muscular contractions of peristalsis. Peristalsis is understood here, however, not merely as a digestive process, as the ‘propulsive movement of the gastrointestinal tract and other tubular organs’, but as the ‘coordinated waves of contraction and relaxation of the circular muscle’ (OED). Accordingly, this thesis reconciles a number of recent approaches to Beckett studies by combining textual, phenomenological and cultural concerns with a detailed account of Beckett’s own familiarity with early twentieth-century medical and psychoanalytical discourses. It examines the extent to which these discourses find a parallel in his work’s corporeal conception of the linguistic and narrative process, where the convolutions, disavowals and disjunctions that function at the level of narrative and syntax are persistently equated with medical ailments, autonomous reflexes and bodily emissions. Tracing this interest to his early work, the first chapter focuses upon the masturbatory trope of ‘dehiscence’ in Dream of Fair to Middling Women, while the second examines cardiovascular complaints in Murphy (1935-6). The third chapter considers the role that linguistic constipation plays in Watt (1941-5), while the fourth chapter focuses upon peristalsis and rumination in Molloy (1947). The penultimate chapter examines the significance of epilepsy, dilation and parturition in the ‘throes’ that dominate Malone Dies (1954-5), whereas the final chapter evaluates the significance of contamination and respiration in The Unnamable (1957-8).
    [Show full text]
  • Samuel Beckett (1906- 1989) Was Born in Dublin. He Was One of the Leading Dramatists and Writers of the Twentieth Century. in Hi
    Samuel Beckett (1906- 1989) was born in Dublin. He was one of the leading t dramatists and writers of the twentieth century. In his theatrical images and t prose writings, Beckett achieved a spare beauty and timeless vision of human suffering, shot through with dark comedy and humour. His 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature citation praised him for ‘a body of work that in new forms of fiction and the theatre has transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exaltation’. A deeply shy and sensitive man, he was often kind and generous both to friends and strangers. Although witty and warm with his close friends, he was intensely private and refused to be interviewed or have any part in promoting his books or plays. Yet Beckett’s thin angular countenance, with its deep furrows, cropped grey hair, long beak- like nose and gull-like eyes is one of the iconic faces of the twentieth century. Beckett himself acknowledged the impression his Irish origin left on his imagination. Though he spent most of his life in Paris and wrote in French as well as English, he always held an Irish passport. His language and dialogue have an Irish cadence and syntax. He was influenced by Becke many of his Irish forebears, Jonathan Swift, J.M. Synge, William and Jack Butler Yeats, and particularly by his friend and role model, James Joyce. When a journalist asked Beckett if he was English, he replied, simply, ‘Au contraire’. Family_ Beckett was born on Good Friday, 13th April 1906, in the affluent village of Foxrock, eight miles south of Dublin.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical, and Sonic Landscapes in Samuel Beckett's Short Dramatic Works
    Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Senior Theses and Projects Student Scholarship Spring 2012 The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical, and Sonic Landscapes in Samuel Beckett's Short Dramatic Works Theresa A. Incampo Trinity College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses Part of the Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Performance Studies Commons, and the Theatre History Commons Recommended Citation Incampo, Theresa A., "The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical, and Sonic Landscapes in Samuel Beckett's Short Dramatic Works". Senior Theses, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 2012. Trinity College Digital Repository, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses/209 The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical and Sonic Landscapes within the Short Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett Submitted by Theresa A. Incampo May 4, 2012 Trinity College Department of Theater and Dance Hartford, CT 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 I: History Time, Space and Sound in Beckett’s short dramatic works 7 A historical analysis of the playwright’s theatrical spaces including the concept of temporality, which is central to the subsequent elements within the physical, metaphysical and sonic landscapes. These landscapes are constructed from physical space, object, light, and sound, so as to create a finite representation of an expansive, infinite world as it is perceived by Beckett’s characters.. II: Theory Phenomenology and the conscious experience of existence 59 The choice to focus on the philosophy of phenomenology centers on the notion that these short dramatic works present the theatrical landscape as the conscious character perceives it to be. The perceptual experience is explained by Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the relationship between the body and the world and the way as to which the self-limited interior space of the mind interacts with the limitless exterior space that surrounds it.
    [Show full text]
  • Guide for the Selection of Commercial Explosives Detection Systems for Law Enforcement Applications
    U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice National Institute of Justice ABOUT THELaw LAW Enforcement ENFORCEMENT and Corrections AND CORRECTIONS Standards and Testing Program Guide for the Selection of Commercial Explosives Detection Systems for Law Enforcement Applications NIJ Guide 100-99 U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs 810 Seventh Street N.W. Washington, DC 20531 Janet Reno Attorney General Raymond C. Fisher Associate Attorney General Laurie Robinson Assistant Attorney General Noël Brennan Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jeremy Travis Director, National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij ABOUT THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AND CORRECTIONS STANDARDS AND TESTING PROGRAM The Law Enforcement and Corrections Standards and Testing Program is sponsored by the Office of Science and Technology of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), U.S. Department of Justice. The program responds to the mandate of the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, which created NIJ and directed it to encourage research and development to improve the criminal justice system and to disseminate the results to Federal, State, and local agencies. The Law Enforcement and Corrections Standards and Testing Program is an applied research effort that determines the technological needs of justice system agencies, sets minimum performance standards for specific devices, tests commercially available equipment against those standards, and disseminates the standards and the test results to criminal justice agencies nationally and internationally. The program operates through: The Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Advisory Council (LECTAC) consisting of nationally recognized criminal justice practitioners from Federal, State, and local agencies, which assesses technological needs and sets priorities for research programs and items to be evaluated and tested.
    [Show full text]
  • 1990 [Ffi@ □ ®®(Q] @[Ru [Ffi@(Q]O@
    OpeningTable Ot Contents Activities 2-5 Organizations 6-21 Student Body 22-43 Mini Mag 44-72 Faculty 73-81 Academics 82-89 Sports 90-105 Advertising 106-135 Index 136-162 163-168 ~cfil □ ®@@ Assumption High School 1020 West Central Park @[ru Davenport, Iowa 52804 Volume 15 ~cm@ □ @ 1990 [ffi@ □ ®®(Q] @[ru [ffi@(Q]o@ Radio began in the early I800's when a Princeton professor, Joseph Henry, discovered that a current in one wire can produce a current in another wire even though the wires aren't touching. In 1895, an Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, sent the first communication signals through the air. At that point radio had begun. The first words were spoken on the air by Reginald A. Fes­ senden in 1906. In 1910,the first radio program was broadcast from the Met­ ropolitan Opera House in New York. The first radio station opened up in 1920,WWJ out of Detroit. 1925marked the beginning of the Golden Age of radio. At this time radio became a ma­ jor source of family entertainment. Soap operas started and comedians made audiences laugh with situation comedies. After the end of the Golden Age music soon became popular to listen to on the radio, especially by teenagers. So far it has been like that for all of our lives, and it probably al­ ways will be. Still Listening to . .. "Free Bird" by Lynnard Skynnard - Jenny McAllister "Last Train to Clarksville" by Monkees -Tracy Bennett "All You Need is Love" by Beatles - Ryan McGuire Top: Seniors Lori Barton and Annette Lemek give each other a congratualatory hug after being voted on the Home­ "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" by coming court at the Bonfire.
    [Show full text]
  • Travels with Samuel Beckett, 1928-1946
    Beyond the Cartesian Pale: Travels with Samuel Beckett, 1928-1946 Charles Travis [I]t is the act and not the object of perception that matters. Samuel Beckett, “Recent Irish Poetry,” e Bookman (1934).1 Introduction he Irish Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett’s (1902-1989) early writings of the 1930s and 1940s depict the cities of Dublin, London and Saint-Lô Tin post-war France, with affective, comedic and existential flourishes, respectively. These early works, besides reflecting the experience of Beckett’s travels through interwar Europe, illustrate a shift in his literary perspective from a latent Cartesian verisimilitude to a more phenomenological, frag- mented and dissolute impression of place. This evolution in Beckett’s writing style exemplifies a wider transformation in perception and thought rooted in epistemological, cultural and philosophical trends associated with the Conti- nental avant garde emerging in the wake of the fin de siècle. As Henri Lefeb- vre has noted: Around 1910, the main reference systems of social practice in Eu- rope disintegrated and even collapsed. What had seemed estab- lished for good during the belle époque of the bourgeoisie came to an end: in particular, space and time, their representation and real- ity indissociably linked. In scientific knowledge, the old Euclidian and Newtonian space gave way to Einsteinian relativity. But at the same time, as is evident from the painting of the period—Cézanne first of all, then analytical Cubism—perceptible space and per- spective disintegrated. The line of horizon, optical meeting-point of parallel lines, disappeared from paintings.2 At the age of fourteen, Beckett, a son of the Protestant Anglo Irish bourgeoisie, witnessed in the largely Catholic nationalist uprising in Ireland, something Charles Travis is at Trinity College Dublin, Long Room Hub.
    [Show full text]
  • Myth-Making and the Novella Form in Denis Johnson's Train Dreams
    University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-15-2015 A Fire Stronger than God: Myth-making and the Novella Form in Denis Johnson's Train Dreams Chinh Ngo University of New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Ngo, Chinh, "A Fire Stronger than God: Myth-making and the Novella Form in Denis Johnson's Train Dreams" (2015). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1982. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1982 This Thesis-Restricted is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis-Restricted in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis-Restricted has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Fire Stronger than God: Myth-making and the Novella Form in Denis Johnson's Train Dreams A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Teaching by Chinh Ngo B.A.
    [Show full text]
  • Miranda, 4 | 2011 “Close Your Eyes and Listen to It”: Schizophonia and Ventriloquism in Beckett
    Miranda Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world 4 | 2011 Samuel Beckett : Drama as philosophical endgame ? “Close your eyes and listen to it”: schizophonia and ventriloquism in Beckett’s plays Lea Sinoimeri Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/1924 DOI: 10.4000/miranda.1924 ISSN: 2108-6559 Publisher Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès Electronic reference Lea Sinoimeri, « “Close your eyes and listen to it”: schizophonia and ventriloquism in Beckett’s plays », Miranda [Online], 4 | 2011, Online since 24 June 2011, connection on 25 October 2018. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/miranda/1924 ; DOI : 10.4000/miranda.1924 This text was automatically generated on 25 October 2018. Miranda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. “Close your eyes and listen to it”: schizophonia and ventriloquism in Beckett... 1 “Close your eyes and listen to it”: schizophonia and ventriloquism in Beckett’s plays Lea Sinoimeri 1 One of the most enigmatic and fascinating innovations of Beckett’s theatre is the use of a mediated voice as a character on stage. From Krapp’s Last Tape to Rockaby, Beckett explores radical solutions to sever voices from bodies, challenging the conventions of dramatic genre and reinventing dramatic character. Beckett's characters grow increasingly uncomfortable with their own voices as they split into twin opposites, a hearer and a speaker and voices move away from their bodies into artificial mouthpieces. The tension between aurality and visuality sustains a new dramatic economy in these plays, where the restless movement of voices functions in opposition to the fixity of the actors on stage.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:2001.04425V4 [Cs.IR] 8 Sep 2020
    Negative Statements Considered Useful Hiba Arnaouta,∗, Simon Razniewskia, Gerhard Weikuma, Jeff Z. Panb aMax Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarland Informatics Campus, Saarbr¨ucken66123, Germany bSchool of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, Informatics Forum, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, Scotland Abstract Knowledge bases (KBs) about notable entities and their properties are an important asset in applications such as search, question answering and dialogue. All popular KBs capture virtually only positive statements, and abstain from taking any stance on statements not stored in the KB. This paper makes the case for explicitly stating salient statements that do not hold. Negative statements are useful to overcome limitations of question answering systems that are mainly geared for positive questions; they can also contribute to informative summaries of entities. Due to the abundance of such invalid statements, any effort to compile them needs to address ranking by saliency. We present a statistical inference method for compiling and ranking negative statements, based on expectations from positive statements of related entities in peer groups. Experimental results, with a variety of datasets, show that the method can effectively discover notable negative statements, and extrinsic studies underline their usefulness for entity summarization. Datasets and code are released as resources for further research. Keywords: knowledge bases, negative knowledge, information extraction, statistical inference, ranking 1. Introduction applications. In medicine, for instance, it is important to distinguish between knowing about the absence of a bio- Motivation and Problem. Structured knowledge is chemical reaction between substances, and not knowing crucial in a range of applications like question answering, about its existence at all. In corporate integrity, it is im- dialogue agents, and recommendation systems.
    [Show full text]
  • Modes of Being and Time in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett
    f.'lODES Ol!' BEING AND TIME IN THE THEATRE OF SANUEL BECKETT MODES OF BEING AND TIME IN THE THEATRE OF SAMUEL BECKETT By ANNA E.V. PRETO, B.A., LICENCE ES LETTRES A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree TvIaster of Arts !-1cMaster Uni versi ty October 1974 MASTER OF ARTS (1974) McMASTER UNIVERSITY (Romance Languages) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Modes of Being and Time in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett AUTHOR: Anna E.V. Preto, B.A. (University of British Columbia) Licence es Lettres (Universite de Grenoble) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Brian S. Pocknell NUNBER OF PAGES: vi, 163 ii AKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Dr. Brian S. Pocknell for his interest, his encouragement and counsel in the patient supervision of this dissertation. I also wish to thank McMaster University for its generous financial assistance. iii CONTENTS I An Introduction to the Beckett Situation 1 II Being on the Threshold to Eternity: Waiting for Godot and Endgame 35 III The Facets of the Prism: Beckett's Remaining Plays 74 IV The Language of the Characters and Time 117 Conclusion 147 Bibliography 153 iv PREFACE Beckett as an author has inspired an impressive range of critical studies to date. The imposing amounts of critical material bear witness to the richness of his writings, which present a wealth of themes and techniques. His plays concentrate for us the problem-themes that already concerned him in his earlier prose works, and bring them to the stage in a more streamlined form. The essential problem which evolves from Beckett's own earlier writings comes to the fore, downstage, in the plays: it is that of being in time, a purgatorial state, the lot of mankind and of Beckett's characters, who are representative of mankind.
    [Show full text]