Animal Motif of Romanticism and Beckett’s Animal ‘Moment’

This thesis conducts a comparative analysis of animality in Samuel Beckett’s early works and in British Romantic literature, using the concept of ‘motif’ and ‘moment.’ Recognising Romanticism as a significant turning point in the contemplation of animals, I examine the essential attitudes toward animals through the lens of animal motif. Writers of the 20th century are both heirs and critics of Romanticism. By analyzing the representations of animality depicted in the works of Beckett, one of the prominent writers of the 20th century, this study explores how early 20th-century writers simultaneously inherit and depart from Romantic perspectives on animal life. To do so, I employ the concept of the ‘animal moment’, which refers to a moment in the narrative when an animal is evoked in such a way that a character is shown or described as being in a condition akin to an animal, thereby calling forth human animality and evoking an awareness of the “human as animal.” The animal moments observed in Beckett’s early works reveal that his view of animals does not remain at the level of cold objectivity, nor does it simply reproduce the sentimentalised Romantic motif of empathising with animals only to quickly withdraw. Rather, Beckett’s writing gestures toward a refusal to generalise animals as mere objects of pity and instead moves toward bringing the human closer to the animal, exposing the singular distinctiveness of individual animals.