“Thought words Words inane Thought inane”: Samuel Beckett’s Critique of Language in his Four Novellas

Abstract

[Abstract] This essay explores how Samuel Beckett’s four postwar novellas express in narratological terms what the Austrian positivist Fritz Mauthner’s Critique of Language (published at the turn of the twentieth century) expresses in philosophical terms: a profound skepticism as regards the ability of language to convey concepts, emotions or information. We analyse three points of coincidence between the thought of the philosopher and the writer’s.