Samuel Beckett and his Doubles

• Grant number: 12/18296-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: February 01, 2013
• End date: January 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Comparative Literature
• Principal Investigator: Fábio Rigatto de Souza Andrade
• Grantee: Cláudia Maria de Vasconcellos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The work in prose and the dramatic work of Samuel Beckett make use of the traditional issue of the double, both as a figure of representation as well as mirroring. Not only in the realm of the characters we find the interest in the doubles, but especially in the mirroring - or reflection - between stage and audience, and between reader and author. The repeated use of this device by Beckett aims the intentional questioning of prevailing genres (short story, novel, drama) and an investigation of the work of language itself. It can be said that the target of this research has a double implication: 1) comparative study of the double in Samuel Beckett, using seminal literary works on the subject, such as those written by Hoffmann, Dostoevsky, Kafkas, Bernhard, only to mention the most important; 2) and a study of the function of duplication and its consequences for the discussion of literary genres and research of language. An example of the scope of this research is the possibility of revising an important concept as Verfremdungseffekt. Developed primarily by Brecht, the distancing effect receives from Beckett a new face (because of the mirroring created by his plays between audience and stage): it is not the breaking of the theatrical illusion that is at stake now, but a poetics that assimilates the audience in the theatrical illusion, a poetic that doubles the audience as a character, and can then question the function of it in our time.