Digital Poetics and Digital Hermeneutics in Beckett Studies: Toward a Manuscript Chronology

This chapter investigates how digital tools – such as a digital edition – can be usefully deployed in Beckett studies, notably in terms of poetics and hermeneutics, building but also deviating from Jonathan Culler’s definition of these notions: ‘Poetics starts with attested meanings or effects and asks how they are achieved’ while hermeneutics ‘starts with texts and asks what they mean, seeking to discover new and better interpretations’. As for ‘poetics’ (Gr. poiein, ‘to make’), genetic criticism starts from the basic assumption that knowing how something was made can help us understand how it works. In this sense the digital medium can be of great help. In terms of ‘digital hermeneutics’, the chapter explores new interpretative strategies, making use of the technology of digital tools, such as the ones provided by the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (BDMP), including automatic collation, intertextual and intratextual searches. Genetic criticism adds a temporal dimension to poetics and hermeneutics. It answers to Culler’s questions about new or attested meanings and ‘how they are achieved’, but from a diachronic perspective, involving traces of the creative process (such as notes, drafts and other manuscripts). The chapter’s focus is therefore on chronology as the backbone of digital poetics and hermeneutics.