Listening to the Inner Voice in Watt: Innovations in Narrative Form

• Autores: Julie D. Campbell
• Localización: Beckett’s Voices / Voicing Beckett / Laurens De Vos (ed. lit.), Mariko Hori Tanaka (ed. lit.), Nicholas E. Johnson (ed. lit.), 2021, ISBN 978-90-04-46839-9, págs. 11-22
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This chapter clarifies how important the inner voice is in relation to Beckett’s artistic practice, by tracing the ways in which Beckett’s own listening to his inner voice is reflected in his novel Watt. Completed in 1945, Watt was written, in the main, during the Second World War, before Beckett began to write drama for the stage and for radio, where voices are made manifest, sounded, and listened by the audience. His fascination with the voice must surely have had a great influence on his decision to write plays, especially for the radio. In Watt there is an intriguing confusion concerning the position of the narrator (or narrators), which at times seems omniscient, at times first person, and also a perplexing mix of both. This essay will relate this procedure with Beckett’s own, as the narrator of Watt can be interpreted as listening to his own inner voice.