The Construction Of The Canon:A Study Of Waiting For Godot As A British Cultural Memory

In every narrative about the development of theatre in twenties century,Samuel Becket is taken as the most important playwright,a crusader whose play Waiting for Godot becomes the cornerstone of a newly legitimized literary play “the theatre of the absurd” and is constructed as the canonical play of this kind.Although about sixty years have elapsed,its influence never deceased.By analyzing the construction of Waiting for Godot as the British cultural memory in the combination of Jan Assmanns' theory of cultural memory,this thesis aims to analyze the ritual form,textual form,and audiovisual form,through which Waiting for Godot as a British cultural memory is constructed and maintained.This thesis contains five parts.The introduction part introduces the background information of the play,literature review,the theory of memory,the significance,and the structure.Chapter one explores how the play Waiting for Godot was successfully staged in British theatre under certain political,economic and cultural context and constructed as the cultural memory embedded in performing-ritual form.Chapter two analyzes how the play was constructed as the cultural memory embedded in textual form that contributes to its stabilization by interpretation and learning after its presence in British theatre.Chapter three investigates how the play was constructed as the cultural memory embedded in audiovisual form with the rise of consumerism in British society.Finally,this thesis comes to the conclusion that the political,social and cultural factors are indispensable in the formation of a memory,and a memory has to be constructed as a fixed cultural one that could last through generations with the help of various cultural forms,such as rites,texts,and visual images.Through the construction of Waiting for Godot as a cultural memory,it has been canonized,because the canonization usually means remembering some specific things.