Samuel Beckett and the terror of literature / Christopher Langlois.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Langlois, Christopher, author.

Series:

Other Becketts.

Other Becketts

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Beckett, Samuel.

Terror in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 pages).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh, [Scotland] : Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Provides a sustained comparative reading of the relation between Beckett and Blanchot through its novel conception of the language and phenomenon of terrorSamuel Beckett and the Terror of Literature addresses the relevance of terror to understanding the violence, the suffering, and the pain experienced by the narrative voices of Beckett’s major post-1945 works in prose: The Unnamable, Texts for Nothing, How It Is, Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, and Worstward Ho. Through a sustained dialogue with the theoretical work of Maurice Blanchot, it accomplishes a systematic interrogation of what happens in the space of literature when writing, and first of all Beckett’s, encounters the language of terror, thereby giving new significance – ethical, ontological, and political – to what speaks in Beckett’s texts.Key FeaturesArticulates a novel conceptual framework through the language of terror for reading Beckett’s major post-1945 works in prose, all the while engaging with key thinkers in the discourse of contemporary critical theory like Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, and Alain BadiouProvides for the first time a thorough articulation of the significance of terror to Blanchot’s understanding not only of what literature is as literature, but also of the literary history of modernity that Blanchot explicitly traces from the Marquis de Sade to Samuel BeckettAffords literary studies (and Beckett and Blanchot studies specifically) a distinctive and timely voice in the veritable terror industry" of scholarly research that has proliferated in the twenty-first century against the politico-historical backdrop of the War on Terror"

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Series Editor’s Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction: Terror in Philosophy, Politics and Literature

1. The Terror of Thinking in The Unnamable

2. The Beginning (Again) and Ending (Again) of Terror in Texts for Nothing

3. The Writing of How It Is in the Paratactic Delay of Terror

4. The Terror of Passivity in Company, Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstward Ho

Coda: Literature at the Turning Point of Terror

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4744-1901-1

1-4744-1902-X

OCLC:

1312727078