@article{ART003282727},
author={Park Sewon},
title={From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where},
journal={Journal of Modern English Drama},
issn={1226-3397},
year={2025},
volume={38},
number={3},
pages={133-159}
TY - JOUR
AU - Park Sewon
TI - From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where
JO - Journal of Modern English Drama
PY - 2025
VL - 38
IS - 3
PB - 한국현대영미드라마학회
SP - 133
EP - 159
SN - 1226-3397
AB - This study explores how Samuel Beckett’s two late television works― Nacht und Träume and What Where―reconfigure the experience of time on screen. Drawing on Deleuze’s account of the time-image, I argue that Nacht und Träume constructs a dream-circuit in which pure optical and acoustic images drift between the actual and the virtual, forming a relay that produces a temporality shaped by suspension rather than progression. What Where, by contrast, drives this logic to a crystalline extreme. Its black screen, emptied of bodies and movement, becomes an indeterminate field where ghostlike faces emerge and vanish without origin or consequence. In this space, the actual and the virtual fold into one another, generating the crystalline temporality that Deleuze identifies as the crystal-image, where both circuits coexist without hierarchy or resolution. Through a comparative reading, the article shows how Beckett’s final television works trace a movement from the relay of dream to the crystalline coexistence of temporal states, revealing a late aesthetic in which time itself flickers, divides, and persists without resolution.
KW - Beckett;Nacht und Träume;What Where;television play;;Deleuze;time-image;dream-image;crystal-image
DO -
UR -
ER -
Park Sewon. (2025). From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where. Journal of Modern English Drama, 38(3), 133-159.
Park Sewon. 2025, "From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where", Journal of Modern English Drama, vol.38, no.3 pp.133-159.
Park Sewon "From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where" Journal of Modern English Drama 38.3 pp.133-159 (2025) : 133.
Park Sewon. From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where. 2025; 38(3), 133-159.
Park Sewon. "From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where" Journal of Modern English Drama 38, no.3 (2025) : 133-159.
Park Sewon. From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where. Journal of Modern English Drama, 38(3), 133-159.
Park Sewon. From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where. Journal of Modern English Drama. 2025; 38(3) 133-159.
Park Sewon. From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where. 2025; 38(3), 133-159.
Park Sewon. "From Dream-image to Crystal-image: Beckett’s Televisual Time in Nacht und Träume and What Where" Journal of Modern English Drama 38, no.3 (2025) : 133-159.
