Beyond the suffering of being : desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett / Roberta Cauchi-Santoro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cauchi-Santoro, Roberta, author.

Series:

Studi e saggi (Florence, Italy) ; 157.

Studi e saggi ; 157

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Desire in literature.

Leopardi, Giacomo, 1798-1837--Criticism and interpretation.

Leopardi, Giacomo.

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

Beckett, Samuel.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 155 pages).

Other Title:

Beyond the Suffering of Being

Place of Publication:

Firenze, Italy : Firenze University Press, [2016]

Summary:

This book challenges critical approaches that argue for Giacomo Leopardi's and Samuel Beckett's pessimism and nihilism. Such approaches stem from the quotation of Leopardi in Beckett's monograph Proust, as part of a discussion about the removal of desire. Nonetheless, in contrast to ataraxia as a form of ablation of desire, the desire of and for the Other is here presented as central in the two authors' oeuvres. Desire in Leopardi and Beckett is read as lying at the cusp between the theories of Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, a desire that splits as much as it moulds the subject when called to address the Other (inspiring what Levinas terms 'infinity' as opposed to 'totality,' an infinity pitted against the nothingness crucial to pessimist and nihilist readings).

Contents:

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTERONE

ON DESIRE

1.1 What Desire?

1.2 Desire as Lack

1.3 Freudian Desire

1.4 Lacanian Desire

1.5 Lévinas and thè Desire ofthè Other

CHAPTER TWO A PERENNIALLY DULL AND INDISTINCT PAIN: "VAIN LONGING THAT VAIN LONGING GO"

2.1 "Souffrance" and "Suffering ofbeing"

2.2 "Souffrance" and "Suffering ofbeing" in thè pessimistic tradition

2.3 Leopardi and Beckett withinthè nihilist tradition

2.4 "Souffrance" and "Suffering ofbeing" within thè Heideggerian existential tradition and thè Levinasian "Ily a"

CHAPTER THREE MAKING SUFFERING SUFFERABLE: DESIRE POR THE OTHER IN LEOPARDI AND BECKETT

3.1 Lacanian versus Levinasian Desire

3.2 Compassion as Pietas to overcome Ataraxia: Desire for thè O/other in Leopardi

3.3 Lacanian and Levinasian Desire for thè Other in Endgame

3.4 Lacanian and Levinasian Desire for thè Other in Happy Days

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

INDEX OFNAMES.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-151) and index.