Abstract

PAEZ, Rafael Rubio. Vico and Becket: The Poetics of Work in Progress. La Palabra [online]. 2019, n.34, pp.41-54. ISSN 0121-8530.  https://doi.org/10.19053/01218530.n34.2019.9527.

Against classical poetics such as those of Aristotle and of XVII French Classicism, Giambattista Vico proposes a return to the origins of the human to explore the nature of poetry understood as poeisis, as creation. Poet means creator. The first inhabitants of the earth after the universal flood were giants called i bestioni by Vico, ferocious wild beings and wandering vagabonds that tried to account for their world with the great poverty of their language. This Neapolitan thinker finds in these beings a fertile ground to think about creation without recurring to the canon of prescriptive poetics. Of course, he was uncompre-hended in his time, but he wouldn't be two centuries later when Joyce and Beckett assume the project of thinking about creations outside the canon and materializing their thought. In fact the first essay and first poem written by Beckett deal with Vico. Throughout the article, we will show how Vico's proposal foreshadows the routes of creation in the XX th century, which doubtlessly inspired Beckett's the aesthetic project under the motif of artists of the time: creation as work in progress.

Keywords : Vico; Beckett; poetics; work in progress; creation.

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