PhD Oral Exam - Hugh Deasy, English

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Beginning with his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women from 1932 and ending with his last, How It Is from 1964, the dissertation describes Beckett’s consistent treatment of students, teachers, study and schooling. It finds that Beckett’s fiction almost always feature protagonists who are graduates, and who, having left their school behind, struggle to apply its analytical methods to the outside world. With one exception, Beckett’s scholars always conclude that their schooling has not adequately prepared them to live life as they wish. This exception is Belacqua Shuah, the hero of Beckett’s early story collection, More Pricks than Kicks. He provides the negative example against which the rest of Beckett’s scholars’ flight from schooling stands in relief: he doggedly persists in his love of bookish wisdom and study. Beckett’s other scholars do not. They seek to offset the limits of their education by a corrective programme of study outside of the school. Further, characters envisage the school in situations and deeds that are conspicuously distant from the classroom: sex work, mental illness, domestic service, ceaseless speech and physical violence all become viable paths towards correcting their school and university education. Though they insist that there is a way out of their schooled mindset, they imagine that their salvation lies in learning the correct information. Each ends up like Belacqua, thoroughly enclosed within the charmed circle of the schoolhouse.