The Crisis of Language in Absurdist Theatre: A Study of Samuel Beckett and Fernando Arrabal's Works

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The Crisis of Language in Absurdist Theatre: A Study of Samuel Beckett and Fernando Arrabal's Works

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Absurdism, absurd theatre, Samuel Beckett, Fernando Arrabal, language crisis, human condition, post-war period, World War II, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, Fando and Lis, The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria, absurdist theatre, theatre of the absurd, silencing, defective language, language failure, existential crisis, philosophical discourse, theological discourse, literary fragments, cultural critique, 20th century literature, modern theatre, avant-garde theatre, existentialism, absurdity, illogical language, fragmented discourse, unreliable narration, philosophical questioning, human impulse, naming, arbitrariness, social discourse, religious discourse, existential discourse, concrete meaning, silence, honest answer, character discourse, monologue, Lucky, Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo, Winnie, Willie, stock phrases, quotations, Shakespeare, cultural origin, learned text, popular formulas, memories, indistinct whole, reason, truth, unnameable, language instrument, postmodern literature, contemporary theatre

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Abstract

Discover how the works of Samuel Beckett and Fernando Arrabal challenge the notion of language as a reliable tool for communication, reflecting the post-war crisis of reason and truth. Explore their absurdist theatre, where characters struggle to convey meaning through defective language, ultimately revealing the arbitrariness of social, religious, and existential discourses. Analyze plays like Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days, where language breaks down, and silence becomes the only honest response to a world that words can no longer name. Uncover the fundamentally human impulse to name and give meaning, despite the futility of language in capturing reality. Dive into the complexities of their theatre, where quotes, literary fragments, and stock phrases are woven together, highlighting the insufficiency of language and the power of silence.

A failing word
A language crisis that transforms into a questioning of the human condition and ordinary discourse
The persistence of this word, as broken as it is, prevents it from being reduced to a simple failure

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[...] What the word cannot say, silence indicates, and it is precisely because language is insufficient that silence imposes itself as the only honest answer to a world that words can no longer name. Thus, in Beckett's and Arrabal's theatre, speech appears as defective since it turns to nothing. But this staging of failure, by exhibiting its own limits, transforms it into a tool for questioning. One of the goals of this crisis of language is probably to strip bare the automatism of everyday discourse, but also to shake the great narratives on which humanity thought it could rely. [...]

[...] From then on, it is worth asking if language, in the theatre of Samuel Beckett and Fernando Arrabal, is simply a place of failure and questioning? We will first see in what way the word appears as defective, then we will analyze how this crisis of language turns into a mode of questioning on the human condition and ordinary discourse, before of us to ask ourselves if the persistence of this word, as broken as it is, prevents us from reducing it to a simple failure. [...]

[...] Their exchanges are carefully interrupted by pauses that Beckett explicitly notes in his stage directions: Time. », « Long silence. ». These silences have the same dramatic status as the word itself. They signal the exhaustion of the discourse, the uselessness of what has just been said. "HAMM: What's the point? CLOV: I don't know. Time. [...]

[...] This writing finds an echo in the work of Eugène Ionesco, another major figure of the theatre of the absurd, and notably in The Bald Soprano, created in 1950. Its characters, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, exchange during the play phrases of absolute banality, based on evidence: 'the ceiling is up, the floor is down'. Gradually, the conversation darkens to the final scene and its succession of sounds that no longer form any sentence. But while chaos seemed to have lodged itself forever in the universe of the play, the latter ends with a return to its exact beginning, with the same lines taken up by other characters, as if language, after being entirely drained of meaning, could only start again from zero. [...]

[...] She recalls their first meeting, the details of a dress she wore that day, a gesture he made, and waits, after each confidence, for a response that does not come or is reduced to a grunt. 'Do you remember that, Willie?' she asks, before continuing without waiting. By speaking to him, she keeps him alive and gives him a scenic presence that his silence would otherwise make indistinguishable. When he responds, even with a simple newspaper headline read aloud, Winnie welcomes his word with infinite gratitude, as if the slightest sign of life justified all the effort she had been striving to provide until then. [...]

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