Samuel Beckett : history, memory, archive / edited by Seán Kennedy and Katherine Weiss.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kennedy, Seán, 1974-

Weiss, Katherine.

Series:

New interpretations of Beckett in the twenty-first century

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989--Criticism and interpretation.

Beckett, Samuel.

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

x, 226 pages ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Summary:

This volume comprises fen essays challenging the dominant account of Samuel Beckett's engagement with history. As the first full-length volume to address the historical debate in Beckett studies, Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive provides both ground-breaking analysis of the major works as well as a sustained interrogation of the critical assumptions that underpin Beckett studies more generally. Drawing on a range of archival materials, and situating Beckett in historical context, these essays pose a strong challenge to the prevailing critical consensus that he was a deracinated modernist who cannot be read historically.

Contents:

1 Does Beckett Studies Require a Subject? Mourning Ireland in the Texts for Nothing / Sean Kennedy 11

2 Between Gospel and Prohibition: Beckett in Nazi Germany 1936-1937 / Mark Nixon 31

3 Beckett's "Brilliant Obscurantics" : Watt and the Problem of Propaganda / James McNaughton 47

4 Beckett's Theatre "After Auschwitz" / Jackie Blackman 71

5 "Faintly Struggling Things" : Trauma, Testimony, and Inscrutable Life in Beckett's The Unnamable / Alysia E. Garrison 89

6 Samuel Beckett, the Archive, and the Problem of History / Robert Reginio 111

7 Archives of the End: Embodied History in Samuel Beckett's Plays / Jonathan Boulter 129

8 "... Humanity in Ruins..." : The Historical Body in Samuel Beckett's Fiction / Katherine Weiss 151

9 Writing Relics: Mapping the Composition History of Beckett's Endgame / Dirk Van Hulle 169

10 "Agnostic Quietism" and Samuel Beckett's Early Development / Matthew Feldman 183.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0230619444

9780230619449

OCLC:

316829390