THE CRITICAL ASPECTS OF BECKETT’S TRILOGY

Beckett's name is associated with the absurd theatre and literature of "exhaustion " and silence. But he has remarkable interest in criticism and literary theory. His "Dante ... Bruno. Vico .. Joyce" (1929) and Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit (1965). The present article attempts to read his Trilogy (IVlolloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable^ from this perspective. The first part is introductory as it discloses the critical insights explicitly stated about the language, self, philosophy and existence. The second section deals with the contro versial issues of language and narration, especially Beckett's use of narrators whose physical status is abnormal, but whose tales are con vincing enough. Beckett's Trilogy (1959) has never ceased stirring heated controversy among critics and scholars. This is partly due to the literary mode it represents (metafiction or anti-novel) and the startlingly pessimistic view. Man here loses nearly all human qualities: identity, name and character. The only thing that keeps him going is the language, the ability to describe and identify things. This last tie to human existence is what is striking in the whole Trilogy. As a metafiction, the novel consciously turns into a treatise where Beckett's ideas of philosophy, culture and the process of writ ing are investigated in detail. The present concentration here is on the critical insights that eventually render the Trilogy almost a critical text paving the way for the philosophical views of the poststructuralists and deconstructionists. Beckett's interest in critical activities dates back to the days when he was a student in Ireland where he had a great admiration for his former French professor, T. B. Rudmose-Brown (Mercier, 35). His great interest in French language and literature turns out to be a deci sive force in Beckett's future. Indeed, his two seminal critical texts