Becketts papegojor. Språk, tal och berättande

Abstract

The parrot is a common symbol, or even cliché, in Western literature, going all the way back from ancient Greece to the present date, and in many a genre. This study reads the oeuvre of the Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) as being closely related to these certain traditions and connotations of for example religion, satire, and speaking nonsense, in his frequent use of parrots and their symbolic potentials, in his writing. Furthermore, it is possible to distinguish a movement in Beckett’s use of parrots, from a more or less traditionally use, to one more philosophically profound. Although the parrot graces us with its presence (or at least may be traced) in almost every work written by Beckett, from the poem ”Whoroscope” (1930) to How It Is (1961), they are only mentioned sparsely by his interpreters. Therefore, a brief history of the literary tradition of the parrot will be expounded. It will function as a reference for the exposition of the examples of parrots from Beckett’s works. Those will, in the movement mentioned above, be viewed in relation, not only intertextually to traditional uses of parrots, but also to other writers with a fancy for the parrot, such as Gustave Flaubert and James Joyce. Their influence on Beckett’s authorship is nothing new; but the interest for the parrot which they all three seem to share in their writings, has not been pinpointed. Additionally, these authors will present important aspects which Beckett picks up, incorporates, and develops, into his own complex web of quotes and references to the tradition. By emphasising these issues, one might more easily observe the grand transformation the parrot is subjected to – and how Beckett’s later uses are differentiated from his earlier and more traditionally ones – when being used as reflecting and symbolising the narratological experiments, the inauthenticity of language, and the indeterminacy of the written word, in for example the Trilogy and Texts for Nothing, as well as illuminating the mindless stuttering of Lucky, in Waiting for Godot.