Beckett and Buddhism / Angela Moorjani.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moorjani, Angela B., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989--Religion.

Beckett, Samuel.

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

Buddhism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 238 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Summary:

Beckett and Buddhism undertakes a twenty-first-century reassessment of the Buddhist resonances in Samuel Beckett's writing. These reverberations, as Angela Moorjani demonstrates, originated in his early reading of Schopenhauer. Drawing on letters and archives along with recent studies of Buddhist thought and Schopenhauer's knowledge of it, the book charts the Buddhist concepts circling through Beckett's visions of the 'human predicament' in a blend of tears and laughter. Moorjani offers an in-depth elucidation of texts that are shown to intersect with the negative and paradoxical path of the Buddha, which she sets in dialogue with Western thinking. She brings further perspectives from cognitive philosophy and science to bear on creative emptiness, the illusory 'I', and Beckett's probing of the writing process. Readers will benefit from this far-reaching study of one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century who explored uncharted topologies in his fiction, theatre, and poetry.

Contents:

Introduction: Buddhism, Schopenhauer, Beckett: Influence, Affinity, Relay?

Schopenhauer's Buddhism Revisited: Recent Archival Evidence

East-West Dialogue via Schopenhauer

Buddhist and Mystic Threads in the Early Fiction

Beckett's Paradoxical Logic through Buddhist and Western Lenses

The Coincidence of Contraries and Noh Drama

The No-Self Staged and Voices from Elsewhere

Rebirth and the Buddhist Unborn in the Fiction and Drama

Dreaming 'all away' in the Final Texts.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 12 Jul 2021).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-009-02185-0

1-009-02205-9

1-009-02408-6