Happy Days:The Discourse Matters

As a classic Beckettian theatrical work,Happy Days was produced in Beckett’s prime time and has enjoyed a global reception since its debut from both the audience and western critics.The play depicts for us the story of an absurd couple who caught in an awkward dilemma of existence wishes to regain happiness via discourse.Although Happy Days is a work of great significance in English literature,studies about this play are relatively rare in China because of the late start of researches on Beckett.Based on Bakhtin’s literary theories,the thesis scrutinizes the “dialogism” in the discourse of Happy Days.The author argues that Beckett not only creates a world of wasteland through the untraditional setting,but also highlights the significance and value of dialogue and communication in the human community: depending on the discourse of the actors,under all circumstances the impulse to communicate and the hope for understanding and being understood is deeply rooted in human nature.The body part of the thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One starts with Bakhtin’s theory of polyphonic discourse and specifically analyzes the polyphonic features in the discourse of Beckett’s two characters in order to unveil the dialogism in the polyphonic discourse.Chapter Two focuses on the time-space relation in aiming to discuss thoroughly the juxtaposed chronotopes in the discourse,by which the dialogue becomes possible despite the borders of time or space.Chapter Three delves into the discourse that reflects the spirit of the medieval carnival and the fundamental significance of dialogism in human discourse as it does in Happy Days.Finally,the thesis concludes that communication is a human instinct that insures dialogues to continue at all times.Since few studies have focused on the dialogism of this play,this thesis now blazes a trail by presenting the dialogic discourse in Beckett’s play against the backdrop of enormous cultural change after the two world wars.