Brandon Moores

Buttoning up: Beckett and the self-translation of humour

When Samuel Beckett undertook to translate (or re-write) his own plays, he also undertook to translate (or re-write) their humour – a task considerably complicated by his precise minimalism and exacting standards, and yet one at which he was outstandingly successful. This presentation explores the principles behind Beckett’s self-translation of the humour of En attendant Godot/Waiting for Godot. The first part will analyse Beckett’s humour using a modified version of Salvatore Attardo’s General Theory of Verbal Humour; the second, following the lead of Kitty van-Leuven-Zwart, will examine the microstructural shifts that make for subtly different sources of humour in the plays, and then move on to the macrostructural effects of these shifts. Finally, I will analyse how Beckett attempts to overcome the respective challenges these two types of translation shifts pose. 

Keywords: Beckett, humour, shifts

Biography

Brandon Moores is a PhD Candidate in York University’s Humanities Department. A native of Montreal, he completed a BA at Concordia’s Liberal Arts College, with a Joint Honours in English Literature and Creative Writing. He is currently writing a dissertation on the translation of humour in Cervantes’ Don Quijote, Martial’s epigrams, and Plautus’ Menaechmi. His MA thesis was a translation of 88 of Martial’s epigrams. Moores has published a number of articles on humour and translation and is currently collaborating with Montreal author Julia Pawlowicz on a translation of her novel Retour d’outre-mer. In 2012 he organized the York University graduate student conference “Snickering Scholars: Humour and the Humanities.”