Narrative Identity and Confessional Self-Accounting in Beckett’s That Time and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground

Abstract

This comparative study is focused on narrativization of dramatic discourse in Beckett’s theatre and dialogization of narrative discourse in Dostoevsky’s prose. Its theoretical framework is provided by Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological and hermeneutic studyOneself as Anotherand Mikhail Bakhtin’s studiesAuthor and Hero in Aesthetic ActivityandProblems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. By employing Ricoeur’s concept ofnarrative identityand Bakhtin’s investigations of dialogic identity andconfessional self-accounting, this study investigates various ways in which Beckett’s “dramaticule”That Timedemonstrates that personal identity has to be narrative, even when it is shaped as a dialogue of several inner “I”s, while Dostoevsky’sNotes from Undergrounddemonstrate that personal identity has to be dialogical, even when it is expressed in a narrative or essayistic form. The paper applies Ricoeur’s concepts ofipse-identity (being the same) andidem-identity (self-constancy), as well as Bakhtin’s concepts ofI-for-myselfandI-for-the-otherin order to compare Underground Man’s inability to feel defined by self-definition only, and Listener’s inability to address himself in first person singular.