Masters Thesis

Dark paradise: rapture and typos in Dante and Beckett

The intertextuality of Dante and Beckett is examined through the use of dramatic contrasts in light and dark. Rapture represents sentient light, derived from Dante's study of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Avicenna. Its opposite Typos is a material form that cancels the light, casts a shadow, or leaves a signature of the creator on the face of creation. Characters in Beckett's Happy Days and the stories "Ding-Dong" and "Dante and the Lobster" present manifestations of Dante's Beatrice figure centered in the attributes of facial expressions as a sign of Rapture. The Typos found in Dante's poetic imagery is traced in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, Molloy, Footfalls, and Rough for Radio II. In the works of Beckett's late period, Not I, and Ill Seen Ill Said, he offers us an inversion of Dante's symbolism, in which darkness is no longer infernal but divine. The brilliant light of God's presence that pervades Dante's Paradiso is so overpowering to modern eyes that Beckett can only do it justice by representing it with its opposite: the Dark Paradise in which the darkness is no longer a threat but a sacred space.

Items in ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.