A Study On Body Language And Its Traumatic Metaphors In Samuel Beckett's Plays

Samuel Beckett,a celebrated poet,critic,novelist,director and playwright of Iran,is one of the pioneers of the ?Theatre of the Absurd?.He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 on account of his rebellious dramatic writing practice,innovative artistic form and strong humanistic concern.Beckett's living social environment and his personal traumatic experience made him aware of the absurdity and irrationality of the world,and prompted him to transform the traditional rational dramaturgy and sought an irrational and visual expression present the absurd human condition at postwar time.Body language is one of these creative expressions.Based on the trauma theory,this thesis adopted five dramas of Beckett—Waiting for Godot,Endgame,Catastrophe,Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days to interpret the profound traumatic metaphors behind the body language in these plays and explore the strong humanistic care in his aesthetic thoughts by virtue of a close reading of these plays.This thesis consists of five parts.The introduction mainly introduces Beckett's achievements and his works,researches on his plays done by domestic and foreign scholars,a laconic introduction of body language and trauma theory.Chapter two classifies the types of body language in Beckett's plays and summarizes its characteristics.Body language in Beckett's plays has various forms.Besides,the characteristics of body language in his plays are distinct,delivering the effect of absurdity,defamiliarization,mechanical trait,comedy and tragedy.Chapter three interprets the textual presentation of Beckett's trauma and explores how Beckett conveys his trauma of the war,emotion as well as the world to the audience by means of using the characters' body language in his plays as metaphors.He depicts many distorted images through the body language of the characters,which make the audience directly confront the absurd postwar world.This kind of visual and silent language shocks the audience profoundly,deeply infects them and provokes their reflection.Chapter four traces Beckett's personal traumatic experience,the trauma of the war,and explores their influence on his aesthetic transformation and writing creation.Chapter five is the conclusion of this thesis.Personal experience and the environment of his era make Beckett have a more profound thinking and understanding of human nature and the relationship between people.He also conveys his sincere humanistic concern and aesthetic ideas to the spectators and readers through his dramatic transformation such as body language in his plays.