{"id":11265,"date":"2008-10-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yfiledev.uit.yorku.ca\/2008\/10\/07\/scholar-detects-autistic-qualities-in-samuel-becketts-characters\/"},"modified":"2025-04-01T14:54:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T18:54:58","slug":"scholar-detects-autistic-qualities-in-samuel-becketts-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/2008\/10\/07\/scholar-detects-autistic-qualities-in-samuel-becketts-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"Scholar detects autistic qualities in Samuel Beckett's characters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stong College presents &ldquo;The Autistic Dynamic in Samuel Beckett&rsquo;s <em>Murphy&quot;<\/em>, a lecture by University of Toronto English Professor <span>Ato Quayson tomrrow, Oct. 8,&nbsp;at noon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"180\" alt=\"\" hspace=\"8\" width=\"110\" align=\"right\" vspace=\"8\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/photos\/20081007\/quayson.jpg\" \/>Quayson will focus&nbsp;on an unexamined feature of&nbsp;Samuel Beckett's writing, namely, the degree to which characters in Beckett&rsquo;s novels illustrate aspects of the autistic spectrum. The purpose&nbsp;is not simply to apply insights from autism research in an analysis of Beckett&rsquo;s central characters but to&nbsp;reinterpret all aspects of his narrative discourse in terms of aesthetic nervousness. The novel <em>Murphy<\/em> will be used to illustrate the links between autism and Beckett's narrative discourse. <\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Right: Ato Quayson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Quayson is&nbsp;inaugural director of U of T's Centre for Diaspora &amp; Transnational Studies. He has published widely in African and postcolonial studies. His books include <em>Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing<\/em> (1997); <em>Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice or Process?<\/em> (2000); <em>Calibrations: Reading for the Social<\/em> (2003) and <em>Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation<\/em> (2007). He is currently editing the two-volume <em>Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature<\/em> and is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>The lecture takes place in the Samuel Beckett Theatre, 112 Stong College. Everyone is welcome. For more information, call 416-736-5132.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ato Quayson combs Beckett's novel <i>Murphy<\/i> for signs of autism, in a lunch-hour talk tomorrow presented by Stong College...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"yfileauthor":[],"qualifier":[],"yfile-author":[],"tags-to-show":[],"workflow":[],"class_list":["post-11265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"acf":{"internal_publish_date":null,"original_image":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Scholar detects autistic 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