SoSe 20: PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: "Samuel Beckett's Media Games"
Richard Marklew
Comments
The aim of this seminar is to engage with Samuel Beckett's texts and productions in so far as they show how he worked with emerging and established media technologies, forged links between different mediums, and how he disrupts and unsettles the expectations of television and film audiences of the time. In his radio plays, Beckett attempts to work with the possibilities of a purely auditory medium, using it to explore the materiality of sound, the body's relationship to sound, and auditory experiences. Likewise, in “Krapp's last tape,” Beckett will present how technologies that can record and replay our thoughts have an impact upon our very notions of selfhood and the working of memory. His television and film productions carefully use the camera and sound technology of the time to present the complexes of subjectivity by creating unsettling shots and by detaching sounds and voices from the images we are presented with. Lastly, this course will be an opportunity to investigate how his stage, television and film works adopt and spring from other artistic mediums and media traditions. Intertextuality and intermediality abound in Beckett's work as we find images from visual art influencing the presentation of characters and stage sets, his favourite musical compositions becoming sources of comfort and discomfort for characters, and the media of popular culture (vaudeville, circus acts, and silent film) being played with.
Please purchase the Faber & Faber edition of the Complete Dramatic Works and read “Waiting for Godot” for the first session.
close11 Class schedule
Regular appointments