| Irish-French Samuel Beckett (1906—1989) is one of the greatest writers during the 20th century. He has influenced not only the way in which the drama is written and performed, but also achieved great success in a range of fields such as novel, essay, poem, film, television, broadcasting play and so on. His novels, rich in postmodernism, break the tradition and make us rethink the meaning of narrative. Beckett's tetralogy of novellas First love, The Expelled, The End, The Calmative and his trilogy Molly (1951), Malone Dies (1951), The Unnamable (1953) earn him a reputation equitable with what Divine Comedy brings to Dante, Paradise Lost to Milton, Faust to Goethe. These works all give a description of the boundary between the damage and redemption of times. However the drama is so shining and eye-catching that Beckett's novels failed to receive the readers'enough attention at the beginning but his literary merit should not be neglected, especially his trilogy. This paper, based on the points of postmodernism and the conception of and theory advanced by Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, attempt to discuss the postmodern features of narrative and aesthetics, explore its literary merit and then the poetic aesthetics.Introduction:we will give a brief description of Beckett's life story and works, and introduce from the academic perspective the present situation of research on him and the translation of his works both at home and abroad, and propose the research problem and meaning of this paper.The fist chapter:choosing the plots and time, the two key factors in novels, we discuss the postmodern narrative of Beckett's trilogy. And then giving attention to bilingual writing and perforated language, through Deleuze's conception of Territorialisation-Deterritorialisation-Reterritorialisation and line of escape, we explore their pioneer experiment feature of antinovel. Those features show that trilogy breaks with the tradition, push back the boundary of novels' expressing art, meet the need of times and it is an innovation not only in form but also the conception.The second chapter:we discuss the postmodern aesthetic features of Beckett's trilogy from the perspective the characters and the theme of wandering, especially the postmodern aesthetic feature of tramps and his travelling games:play and becoming. To explore how the trilogy vividly explain Deleuze's "Becoming" philosophy, Beckett's tramps resist the mighty and tend to the process of freedom through becoming-minor and becoming-nothingness, which show that the trilogy correspond with what the postmodern poetics interests.The third chapter:based on the perspective of postmodern and the Foucault's conception of discipline and order, as well as relevant theories, we show Beckett's concern and reflection of social reality in his trilogy, combining with the writers' own experience, background and historic events. Through Deleuze's machine poetics, we illustrate further and link with society, and pay attention to the mutual illustration between the literature and philosophy, the connection among literature, philosophy and real life, and finally realize that trilogy does not exist in isolation.Conclusion:to sum up, Beckett's trilogy has the postmodern spirit and features in narrative, and it correspond with what the postmodern poetics interests in aesthetics features, which is the top performance of postmodern philosophic thought. Besides the profound philosophic thought, the trilogy has deeper real meanings that show the writer's sincere concern for the society, politics and human existence and humanity. In a word, Beckett's trilogy has a very high value in literature and a broad theoretical illustrating space. |
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