Les jeux entre formes dramatiques et formes narratives dans India Song de Duras et Pas de Beckett

Abstract

Contemporary drama presents us with many cases of discrepancy between the visual and linguistic signs. After the various forms of "gestural" drama there now seems to be a notable comeback of the narrative which, although it dominates is very often badly delimited. What is the bridge between the narrative and dramatic form of this type of drama? Are we to conclude from this that we are witnessing an outburst of drama specificity? In order to answer these questions we shall examine two works which in various degrees are representative of this phenomenon, India Song by Marguerite Duras and Pas (Footfalls in English) by Samuel Beckett, so as to be able to see how certain well-known aspects of the narrative are first deconstructed and then afterwards reconstructed differently, notably: its form (integrated or not in the drama, as in the so called epic form), its functions of "information", "discourse", "designation" of the spatial elements.

We can then ask ourselves if the manipulation of the functions of the narrative does not lead to a rhetoric of "displacement instead of representation" (Lyotard), which could well be another form of drama-specificity altogether.