A New-Historicism and Reader-Response Exploration of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"

Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject Didactics - English - History of Literature, Eras, grade: 2.5, University of Lagos, language: English, abstract: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot occupies a reverend domain in literary history for reasons critics are quick to mention when the need arises. From its first premiere in 1953 to this current day, the text is still being highly reputed. The intention here is to attempt an investigation for such hallowed disposition in the oeuvre of literature through the application of New-Historicism and Reader-response criticsms. The research motivation stems from the interest in noting how Beckett is able to encode the prevailing manners of the Modernist literary era. Beyond this, the objective of generating subjective meaning through text-reader transaction adds to the sympathy of this study in that, it is the intention here to present the features that qualify the text as an Absurdist play.