Ma prochaine conférence : "Beckett & WW2: Translating "Godot" and erasing the war
Abstract :
By comparing En attendant Godot and Waiting for Godot, I would like to show that, when Beckett has translated his play in English, he has erased or attenuated several obvious references to his experiment of WW2. And I would like to suggest that, if he did so, it was not (or not only) because such references would have been difficult to understand for an English audience, but because he wanted to make his work less dependent on his historical and biographical background. This tendency is well-known for later works, like “Happy days” (the manuscript shows a strong Irish background, but it is not the case of the final version), but I think Godot is the only play where we have a French text with a strong historical background, and an English with a weak one.
The paper will be followed by a presentation by Prof. Gouvard and Dr Dominic Glynn, Lecturer in French, Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, on their joint research project, ‘Performing Beckett / Jouer Beckett’ which launches 2017.
IES, Room 234, 6pm-8pm.