Sadean Intertext and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett's Works.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baroghel, Elsa.

Series:

Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (342 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2026.

Summary:

This book explores the connections between Samuel Beckett and the Marquis de Sade, two iconic authors whose legacies had a profound impact on the intellectual and cultural landscape of the 20th century.

Contents:

Cover

Sadean Intertext and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett's Works Elsa Baroghel

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Referencing system and abbreviations used

Texts by Beckett

Beckett's translations of critical texts on Sade

Texts by Sade

Contents

Introduction Sade in Beckett's Time

1. Contextualization

2. Existing scholarship on Beckett and Sade

3. Contribution of this project

4. Overview and methodological remarks

1: A 'Kind of Metaphysical Ecstasy' (Re)Discovering Sade in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

1. A nascent interest: early approaches to Sade

1.1 Biographical background and censorship

1.2 Sade and sadism through Praz and Proust

1.3 The mad leading the mad: sadism in the asylum

2. 'ils sont tous fous': A Sadean satire of pure Reason

2.1 The 'ethical yoyo': Beckett's S/sad(e) laugh and the 'po-ethics' of parody

2.2 Beckett, with Kant and Sade: epistemology and rationalism

2.3 Mind-body dualism and the sexual imagination: Descartes, Kant, and Sade

3. 'Now with regard to Mary's limbs': Beckett's and Sade's bodies

3.1 Disgusting bodies

3.2 Sexual grotesquerie

3.3 'Essentially a girl': Sade's and Beckett's women

4. Conclusion

2: 'Freudian Blarney, Sodom and Begorrah' From Schopenhauer to Freud . . . with Sade

1. Desire, narcissism, and the Freudian myth (Schopenhauer, Sade, Freud)

1.1 Desire and Sadean pessimism

1.2 The Freudian myth: Beckett's comedy of pessimism

1.3 Narcissism and self-love

2. Anal-sadism and its aesthetic and diegetic manifestations

2.1 Coprophilia and the body as eating-shitting machine

2.2 Unconscious copro-symbols

2.3 Spatial metaphors and the economy of shit

3. Anal-sadism à deux

3.1 Anal-sadism and the Oedipus complex

3.2 Sadism in (pseudo)couples

3.3 L'affaire Moran

4. Conclusion.

3: Comment c'est and Les 120 journées de Sodome A Case-Study

2. Structural and stylistic debts to the 120 journées

3. 'Étrons et rectums ga[m]ahuchés': Comment c'est and Sadean imagery

4. Written wounds and linguistic violence

5. Reading Sade with Blanchot: the critical imagination

6. Conclusion

4: 'Si tant est que le noir les attende' Beckett's 'Gloom' and the Aesthetics of Evil

1. Bourreaux and victims: sadism after Comment c'est

1.1 Unspeakable confessions: the modalities of torture in late Beckett

1.2. 'Demain, qui sait, nous serons libres': Beckett, Sade, and Hegel

1.3. Bourreaux, victims, and the law

2. Noir Beckett and the aesthetics of evil

2.1 'Pour vexer les Angliches': Beckett and the literature of 'gloom'

2.2 'Cet impossible possible': Beckett, Sade, and Kafka

2.3. 'For good or ill/for good and ill': Beckett and evil

Conclusion: The Poetics of Imagination

Works Cited

Works by Samuel Beckett

Works by Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (Marquis de Sade)

Secondary sources

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-897416-7

OCLC:

1590913422