Transcending tradition: Thematic enclosure of modernist and postmodern elements in "Molloy" by Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy stands as a seminal text at the interface between modernist and postmodernist literary movements. This thesis investigates how modernist and postmodernist themes and narrative techniques intertwine throughout Molloy. Beckett's fragmented structure emerges from two narrators: Molloy and Jacques Moran. Molloy's narrative is non-linear and made out of memories, sensations and thoughts, and this reflects the theme of stream of consciousness and modernist narrative technique. Conversely, Moran's narration starts from a linear beginning and progresses chaotically as it reaches the end, reflecting the modernist narrative fragmentation but also being characteristic of postmodern narrative techniques (self-narration and intertextuality). Molloy's sentences and language are repetitive and circular; this repetitiveness, within a self-referential language, reflects both the existential stasis of the characters as well as bringing up the impossibility of language to represent reality. The most relevant themes in the novel are: the search for identity and its loss, existential anxiety and alienation. The stories of Molloy and Moran investigate both the modernist alienation and the postmodern uncertainty and meaninglessness. Molloy constitutes a unique book that brings modernist and postmodernist features and concepts together and this makes it a seminal work not only in Irish modernism but also at theatrical, cinematic and literary-philosophical levels - this thesis intends to highlight both Molloy's position within modernist and postmodernist literature as well as Beckett's innovative use of narrative techniques. Samuel Beckett stood out by innovating and pushing literature into territories of ambiguity and complexity, which were expanded by the emergence of postmodernist thought. Keywords: Fragmented Narrative, Existential Alienation, Intertextuality, Language Ambiguity