Samuel Beckett : laughing matters, comic timing / Laura Salisbury.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Salisbury, Laura.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Beckett, Samuel.

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989.

Comic, The, in literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

viii, 253 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2012]

Summary:

Samuel Beckett is a funny writer. He is also an author whose work is taken to respond ethically to the unspeakable seriousness of the post-Holocaust situation. How can these two statements sit together?

Ranging widely over Beckett's fiction, drama and critical writings, and including readings of Murphy, the Trilogy, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, the late prose and the late plays, this book demonstrates that it is through Beckett's comic timing that we can understand the double gesture of his art: the ethical obligation to represent the world how it is while, at the same time, opening up a space for how it ought to be. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Critical Joking: The Early Prose 37

Superiority, Sarcasm, Scholarship 38

The Loutishness of Learning 47

Diminishing Laughing Returns 51

Art vs. Book-Keeping 58

S/M: Scholarship and Mimicry 62

Critical Timing 73

2 Gagging in the Trilogy 77

Gagging for It 78

Partial Incorporation 82

An Obligation to Express 86

Tiring Desire 91

Toilet Training, Resistant Material 96

Nihil in Intellectu 104

3 Power Playing in Endgame 113

Perhaps 115

Unhappiness: Nothing Funnier 119

Playing for Time 124

The Play of the Audience 130

Just Play 136

Dialectics at a Standstill 143

4 Comic Tremors: The Late Prose 148

Embers and Ashes 150

Imagination at Wit's End 159

Ill Saying, Ill Said 169

Ill Seeing 178

5 Slapstick Echoes: The Late Plays 185

Limping Gags 186

Deadpan Demands 194

Gravity and Levity 201

'Kindly Tune Accordingly' 209

'Like Something Out of Beckett' 215.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [235]-246) and index.

ISBN:

9780748647484

0748647481

OCLC:

790555723