Beckett and embodiment : body, space, agency / Amanda M. Dennis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dennis, Amanda, author.

Series:

Other Becketts.

Edinburgh scholarship online.

Other Becketts

Edinburgh scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Phenomenology and literature.

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

Beckett, Samuel.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (257 pages)

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2023]

Summary:

Argues that the abject, decrepit body in Beckett does not signal the impossibility of agency but demands its reconceptualisation. Analysing the representation of the body in relation to the environment in Beckett's work, the author interrogates the power to do and act. Separating dynamic interaction from willed intention, Amanda Dennis shows how Beckett's oeuvre refashions subjectivity in dialogue with a disintegrating environment. The book provides a phenomenological reading of Beckett to argue that sensation and embodiment support our interactions with our material world, enabling possibilities for embodied agency in collaboration with our physical and linguistic surroundings.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Series Editor’s Preface

Acknowledgements

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Introduction Embodied Agency: Towards an Ecology of the Subject

1. From Cartesian Ruins: Rocking Chair Phenomenology

2. Short-Circuited Rationalism, or How the Body Means

3. From Dialectics to Infinity: Life Cycles in Molloy, Malone Dies and Endgame

4. Radical Indecision: Aporia and Embodied Agency in The Unnamable

5. Style and the Violence of Passivity: How It Is

6. Compulsive Bodies, Creative Bodies: Quad and Agency

7. The Body and Creation: Worstward Ho

Conclusion: Embedded in the World: Beckett, Late Modernism, Earth-Body Art

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed on May 24, 2023).

Previously issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Dennis, Amanda M. Beckett and Embodiment

ISBN:

1-3995-0946-2

1-4744-6302-9

1-4744-6301-0

OCLC:

1289814977