FUN DE PARTIE: Puns and Paradigms in

Abstract

Beckett's bilingual texts and self-translations raise awkward questions as to how two 'different' works can be equally parts of a greater whole or complementary aspects of the 'same' text. In this paper I consider how puns, allusions and other linguistic paradigms constitute points of resistance, particularly when sentiments originally written in one language seek expression in another. By describing the 'machinery' of the pun in terms of 'sameness' and 'difference,' I seek to identify its role in the dialectic of 'equivalence' and 'mis-matching' implicit in the binary relationship of and .