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THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE FAMILIAR AND THE EERIE: THE REPRESENTATION OF FREUD’S UNCANNY IN BECKETT’S ENDGAME

Year 2024, , 493 - 505, 30.09.2024
https://doi.org/10.37999/udekad.1502394

Abstract

This article examines the interaction between the familiar and the eerie, as theorized by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in his essay “The Uncanny” (1919), and to what extent such an interaction may have been represented in the barren and post-apocalyptic setting of Samuel Beckett’s (1906-1989) Endgame (1957). Freud’s concept of the uncanny reveals it as a phenomenon that arises from the unsettling revival of what was once familiar, now transformed into something strangely unfamiliar. By conducting an analysis of Freud’s uncanny and its representation in Beckett’s play, this research aims to explain the existence of the eerie in human consciousness and its influence on the existential challenges represented by the actions and dialogues of the characters, the setting and the repetitive, seemingly pointless exchanges between Hamm and Clov. The play’s representation of reliance, isolation, and the ongoing struggle because of the inescapable nature of death puts forth the idea of the uncanny. Therefore, the play has parallels with Freud’s concept of the uncanny since it represents the uncanny as an element of the human experience, marked by an ongoing struggle that takes place between existence and nonexistence, actuality and deception.

References

  • Altunsoy, Ş. (2017). Love as a Threat: Christine de Pizan’s Reflections on Courtly Love in the Book of the Duke of True Lovers. The Journal of International Social Research, 10 (54), 6-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.17719/jisr.20175434565
  • Bailar, M. (2016). Uncanny Anatomies/Figures of Wax. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 49 (2), 29-53.
  • Baroghel, E. (2010). From Narcissistic Isolation to Sadistic Pseudocouples: Tracing the Genesis of “Endgame”. Samuel Beckett Today, 22, 123-133.
  • Beckett, S. (2006). The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett. Faber and Faber.
  • Berlin, N. (2009). Traffic of our Stage: Beckett’s Endgame. The Massachusetts Review, 50 (3), 402-411.
  • Coburn, M. (2015). The Uncanny from Freud to Flaiano: A Reprise. Italica, 92 (4), 874-892.
  • Cohn, R. (2012). Beckett Directs: Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape. In S. E. Gontarski (Ed.). On Beckett: Essays and Criticism (pp. 218-231). Wimbledon Publishing Company.
  • Çelik, N. (2022). From Visuality to Action: Traces of Ekphrasis in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. The Journal of Cultural Studies, 14, 172-188. https://doi.org/10.46250/kulturder.1142469
  • Fenichel, T. (2013). Neurotic Being and Erotic Time: Philosophic Reflections on Hans Loewald’s Contributions to Psychoanalysis. American Imago, 70 (4). 663-698.
  • Freer, S. (2013). Magritte: The Uncanny Sublime. Literature and Theology, 27 (3), 330-344. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23926909
  • Freud, S. (2003). The Uncanny. (McLintock D. Trans.). Penguin Books.
  • Garrard, G. (2011). “Endgame”: Beckett’s “Ecological Thought”. Samuel Beckett Today, 23, 383-397. https://doi:10.1163/18757405-023001025
  • Halpern, R. (2014). Beckett’s Tragic Pantry: “Endgame” and the Deflation of the Act. PMLA, 129 (4), 742-750.
  • Hillman, D. (2013). Freud’s Shylock Author(s). American Imago, 70 (1), 1-50. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26305040
  • Horowitz, E. (2004). “Endgame”: Beginning to End. Journal of Modern Literature, 27 (4), 121-128. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831809
  • Humbert, D. (2013). Re-Visiting the Double: A Girardian Reading of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Strangers on a Train. Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 20, 253-262. https://doi:10.14321/contagion.20.2013.0253
  • Levy, E. P. (2002). Disintegrating Process in “Endgame”. Samuel Beckett Today, 12, 263-279.
  • Marynowsky, W. (2012). The Uncanny Automaton. Leonardo, 45 (5), 482-483.
  • Mattis, A. (2012). Gothic Interiority and Servants in Wharton’s A Backward Glance and “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”. Twentieth Century Literature, 58 (2), 213-237. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2012-3003
  • Menke, C. (2009). Tragic Play: Irony and Theatre from Sophocles to Beckett. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Mete, B. (2019). Iris Murdoch’s Structuralism: Disbelief in Language. Humanitas: International Journal of Social Sciences, 14, 358-372. https://doi.org/10.20304/humanitas.574447
  • Morin, E. (2015). Endgame and Shorter Plays: Religious, Political and Other Readings. The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. D. V. Hulle (Ed.). pp. 115-128. Cambridge University Press.
  • Nadal, M. (2016). Trauma and the Uncanny in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. The Edgar Allan Poe Review, 17 (2), 178-192.
  • Olk, C. (2011). “A Matter of Fundamental Sounds” - The Music of Beckett’s “Endgame”. Poetica, 43 (3/4), 391-410. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43028518
  • Owen, C., and A. Crawford. (2020). Introduction to the Speical Issue: The Two-Hunderd-Year Legacy of E. T. A. Hoffman: Transgressions of Fantastika. Marvels & Tales, 34 (1), 13-22.
  • Özçelik, K. (2023). The Sense of an Ending: A Postmodern Challenge of Truth. World Journal of English Language, 13 (1), 62-68. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v13n1p62
  • Pearson, N. C. (2001). “Outside of Here It’s Death”: Co-Dependency and the Ghosts of Decolonization in Beckett’s “Endgame”. ELH, 68 (1), 215-239.
  • Punter, D. (2007). The Uncanny. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. C. Spooner & E. McEnvoy (Eds.). pp. 129-136. Routledge.
  • Rumble, V. (2011). Progress in Spirit: Freud and Kristeva on the Uncanny. Phenomenologises of the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality. R. Kearney & K. Semonovitch (Eds.). pp. 168-195. Fordham University Press.
  • Sağıroğlu, R. (2016). A Compact Embodiment of Pluralities and Denial of Origins: Atwood’s the Year of the Flood. European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 1 (3), 141-146.
  • Salisbury, L. (2012). Samuel Beckett: Laughing Matters, Comic Timing. Edinburgh University Press.
  • Schlipphacke, H. (2015). The Place and Time of the Uncanny. Pacific Coast Philology, 50 (2), 163-172. https://doi:10.5325/pacicoasphil.50.2.0163
  • Shuttleworth, S. (2015). Childhood, Severed Heads, and the Uncanny: Freudian Precursors. Victorian Studies, 58 (1), 84-110.
  • Sully, J. (1896). Studies of Childhood. D. Appleton.
  • Zilcosky, J. (2013). Savage Science: Primitives, War Neurotics, and Freud’s Uncanny Method. American Imago, 70 (3), 461-486. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26305061
  • Zimmermann, E. (2015). “Always the same stairs, always the same room”: The Uncanny Architecture of Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight. Journal of Modern Literature, 38 (4), 74-92.
  • Weller, S. (2010). Staging Psychoanalysis: “Endgame” and the Freudian Theory of the Anal-Sadistic Phase. Samuel Beckett Today, 22, 135-147. https://doi:10.1163/18757405-022001010
  • Worton, M. (1994). Waiting for Godot and Endgame: theatre as text. The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. J. Pilling (Ed.). pp. 67-87. Cambridge University Press.

TANIDIK İLE ESRARENGİZ ARASINDAKİ ETKİLEŞİM: BECKETT’İN OYUNSONU ESERİNDE FREUD’UN TEKİNSİZ KAVRAMININ TEMSİLİ

Year 2024, , 493 - 505, 30.09.2024
https://doi.org/10.37999/udekad.1502394

Abstract

Bu makale, Sigmund Freud’un (1856-1939) “Tekinsiz” (1919) adlı makalesinde tanımladığı tanıdık ile ürkütücü olan arasındaki etkileşimi ve bu etkileşimin Samuel Beckett’in (1906-1989) Oyunsonu (1957) adlı eserinin çorak ve kıyamet sonrası ortamında ne ölçüde temsil edildiğini incelemektedir. Freud’un tekinsizliği incelemesi, onu bir zamanlar tanıdık olanın şimdi tuhaf bir şekilde tanıdık olmayana dönüşerek tedirgin edici bir şekilde yeniden canlanmasından kaynaklanan bir fenomen olarak ortaya koymaktadır. Bu araştırma, Freud’un tekinsizliğinin ve Beckett’in oyunundaki temsilinin bir analizini yaparak, ürkütücünün insan bilincindeki varlığını ve karakterlerin eylemleri ve diyalogları, teatral mekân ve Hamm ile Clov arasındaki tekrarlayan, görünüşte anlamsız söz alışverişleri tarafından temsil edilen varoluşsal zorluklar üzerindeki etkisini açıklamayı amaçlamaktadır. Oyunun güven, izolasyon ve ölümün kaçınılmaz doğasıyla süregelen mücadeleyi temsil etmesi, tekinsizlik fikrini ortaya koymaktadır. Bu nedenle oyun, Freud’un tekinsizlik kavramıyla paralellikler taşır çünkü tekinsizliği, varlık ve yokluk, gerçeklik ve yanılma arasında süregelen bir mücadelenin öne çıktığı insan deneyiminin bir unsuru olarak temsil eder.

References

  • Altunsoy, Ş. (2017). Love as a Threat: Christine de Pizan’s Reflections on Courtly Love in the Book of the Duke of True Lovers. The Journal of International Social Research, 10 (54), 6-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.17719/jisr.20175434565
  • Bailar, M. (2016). Uncanny Anatomies/Figures of Wax. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 49 (2), 29-53.
  • Baroghel, E. (2010). From Narcissistic Isolation to Sadistic Pseudocouples: Tracing the Genesis of “Endgame”. Samuel Beckett Today, 22, 123-133.
  • Beckett, S. (2006). The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett. Faber and Faber.
  • Berlin, N. (2009). Traffic of our Stage: Beckett’s Endgame. The Massachusetts Review, 50 (3), 402-411.
  • Coburn, M. (2015). The Uncanny from Freud to Flaiano: A Reprise. Italica, 92 (4), 874-892.
  • Cohn, R. (2012). Beckett Directs: Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape. In S. E. Gontarski (Ed.). On Beckett: Essays and Criticism (pp. 218-231). Wimbledon Publishing Company.
  • Çelik, N. (2022). From Visuality to Action: Traces of Ekphrasis in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. The Journal of Cultural Studies, 14, 172-188. https://doi.org/10.46250/kulturder.1142469
  • Fenichel, T. (2013). Neurotic Being and Erotic Time: Philosophic Reflections on Hans Loewald’s Contributions to Psychoanalysis. American Imago, 70 (4). 663-698.
  • Freer, S. (2013). Magritte: The Uncanny Sublime. Literature and Theology, 27 (3), 330-344. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23926909
  • Freud, S. (2003). The Uncanny. (McLintock D. Trans.). Penguin Books.
  • Garrard, G. (2011). “Endgame”: Beckett’s “Ecological Thought”. Samuel Beckett Today, 23, 383-397. https://doi:10.1163/18757405-023001025
  • Halpern, R. (2014). Beckett’s Tragic Pantry: “Endgame” and the Deflation of the Act. PMLA, 129 (4), 742-750.
  • Hillman, D. (2013). Freud’s Shylock Author(s). American Imago, 70 (1), 1-50. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26305040
  • Horowitz, E. (2004). “Endgame”: Beginning to End. Journal of Modern Literature, 27 (4), 121-128. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831809
  • Humbert, D. (2013). Re-Visiting the Double: A Girardian Reading of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Strangers on a Train. Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 20, 253-262. https://doi:10.14321/contagion.20.2013.0253
  • Levy, E. P. (2002). Disintegrating Process in “Endgame”. Samuel Beckett Today, 12, 263-279.
  • Marynowsky, W. (2012). The Uncanny Automaton. Leonardo, 45 (5), 482-483.
  • Mattis, A. (2012). Gothic Interiority and Servants in Wharton’s A Backward Glance and “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”. Twentieth Century Literature, 58 (2), 213-237. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2012-3003
  • Menke, C. (2009). Tragic Play: Irony and Theatre from Sophocles to Beckett. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Mete, B. (2019). Iris Murdoch’s Structuralism: Disbelief in Language. Humanitas: International Journal of Social Sciences, 14, 358-372. https://doi.org/10.20304/humanitas.574447
  • Morin, E. (2015). Endgame and Shorter Plays: Religious, Political and Other Readings. The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. D. V. Hulle (Ed.). pp. 115-128. Cambridge University Press.
  • Nadal, M. (2016). Trauma and the Uncanny in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. The Edgar Allan Poe Review, 17 (2), 178-192.
  • Olk, C. (2011). “A Matter of Fundamental Sounds” - The Music of Beckett’s “Endgame”. Poetica, 43 (3/4), 391-410. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43028518
  • Owen, C., and A. Crawford. (2020). Introduction to the Speical Issue: The Two-Hunderd-Year Legacy of E. T. A. Hoffman: Transgressions of Fantastika. Marvels & Tales, 34 (1), 13-22.
  • Özçelik, K. (2023). The Sense of an Ending: A Postmodern Challenge of Truth. World Journal of English Language, 13 (1), 62-68. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v13n1p62
  • Pearson, N. C. (2001). “Outside of Here It’s Death”: Co-Dependency and the Ghosts of Decolonization in Beckett’s “Endgame”. ELH, 68 (1), 215-239.
  • Punter, D. (2007). The Uncanny. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. C. Spooner & E. McEnvoy (Eds.). pp. 129-136. Routledge.
  • Rumble, V. (2011). Progress in Spirit: Freud and Kristeva on the Uncanny. Phenomenologises of the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality. R. Kearney & K. Semonovitch (Eds.). pp. 168-195. Fordham University Press.
  • Sağıroğlu, R. (2016). A Compact Embodiment of Pluralities and Denial of Origins: Atwood’s the Year of the Flood. European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 1 (3), 141-146.
  • Salisbury, L. (2012). Samuel Beckett: Laughing Matters, Comic Timing. Edinburgh University Press.
  • Schlipphacke, H. (2015). The Place and Time of the Uncanny. Pacific Coast Philology, 50 (2), 163-172. https://doi:10.5325/pacicoasphil.50.2.0163
  • Shuttleworth, S. (2015). Childhood, Severed Heads, and the Uncanny: Freudian Precursors. Victorian Studies, 58 (1), 84-110.
  • Sully, J. (1896). Studies of Childhood. D. Appleton.
  • Zilcosky, J. (2013). Savage Science: Primitives, War Neurotics, and Freud’s Uncanny Method. American Imago, 70 (3), 461-486. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26305061
  • Zimmermann, E. (2015). “Always the same stairs, always the same room”: The Uncanny Architecture of Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight. Journal of Modern Literature, 38 (4), 74-92.
  • Weller, S. (2010). Staging Psychoanalysis: “Endgame” and the Freudian Theory of the Anal-Sadistic Phase. Samuel Beckett Today, 22, 135-147. https://doi:10.1163/18757405-022001010
  • Worton, M. (1994). Waiting for Godot and Endgame: theatre as text. The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. J. Pilling (Ed.). pp. 67-87. Cambridge University Press.
There are 38 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects British and Irish Language, Literature and Culture
Journal Section Research Articles
Authors

Mehmet Akif Balkaya 0000-0001-6094-2292

Early Pub Date September 29, 2024
Publication Date September 30, 2024
Submission Date June 18, 2024
Acceptance Date August 23, 2024
Published in Issue Year 2024

Cite

APA Balkaya, M. A. (2024). THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE FAMILIAR AND THE EERIE: THE REPRESENTATION OF FREUD’S UNCANNY IN BECKETT’S ENDGAME. Uluslararası Dil Edebiyat Ve Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi, 7(3), 493-505. https://doi.org/10.37999/udekad.1502394

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