Waiting For Godot in Brazil: the Brazilian critical reception

• Grant number: 13/06305-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): June 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Languages
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Bebiano de Almeida
• Grantee: Adalton Nogueira Orefice Junior
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Study on the Brazilian critical reception of Waiting For Godot (1952), by Samuel Beckett. We will focus our study on the readings performed by theater critics and scholars representing Beckett's critical reception. The hypothesis that guides our work is the consideration that two different interpretations guided the reception from the 1950s to the present day. The first interpretation, inspired by Martin Esslin and its concept of "theater of the absurd", is linked to existentialism and starred in the Brazilian readings until about the middle 1980s. The second interpretation, which begins in the 1980s and reaches to play a dominant role in Brazilian critics, differentiates itself by privileging an investigation of formal procedures as well as historical elements of Waiting For Godot. (AU)