초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Jeong, Youn-Gil. “From Absurdity to the Voice of the Nonhuman Subject: Observations on Ecological Perspectives in Samuel Beckett’s Plays.” Modern Studies in English Language & Literature 68.1 (2024): 323-42. The ecological aspects have been presented in various forms of literature over the centuries. This paper examines Samuel Beckett's famous plays through the lens of ecocritical theory. World War II had a profound effect on Beckett as a writer, and this paper attempts to shift the reader's focus from absurdity and existentialism to ecological thinking. As a pioneer of ecocriticism, his plays are ironically appropriate for this time of climate change anxiety. Beckett's depiction of internal and external waste can thus be analyzed ecologically and critically as documenting the dangers that modernity poses to humanity's fragile and malleable relationship with nature, and Beckett's work is ultimately linked to the philosophical framework of first-generation ecocriticism, which is seen as the source of the modern ecological crisis. It does so by fictionalizing and dramatizing the dire consequences for nature that threaten to radically alter the way humans live on the planet, and Endgame presents a life of external and internal waste in the aftermath of modernity. Reading Beckett in this way can thus open up a more radical conversation with those who are not initially persuaded by ecocriticism's focus on nature. (Dongguk University)
