Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies New Critical Essays

by Gibson, Andrew; Ackerley, Chris; Addyman, David; Wheatley, David; Herren, Graley; Bailey, Iain; Nixon, Mark; Fifield, Peter; Maude, Ulrika; Tajiri, Yoshiki; Feldman, Matthew

• ISBN13: 9781408183618
• ISBN10: 1408183617
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-05-23
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Summary

Published in association with the seminar series of the same name held by the University of Oxford, Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies presents the best new scholarship addressing the sources, development and ongoing influence of Samuel Beckett's work. Edited by convenors Dr Peter Fifield and Dr David Addyman, the volume presents ten research essays by leading international scholars ranging across Beckett's work, opening up new avenues of enquiry and association for scholars, students and readers of Beckett's work.

Among the subjects covered the volume includes studies of:
·Beckett and the influence of new media 1956-1960
·the influence of silent film on Beckett's work
·death, loss and Ireland in Beckett's drama - tracing Irish references in Beckett's plays from the 1950s and 1960s, including Endgame, All That Fall, Krapp's Last Tape and Eh Joe
·a consideration of Beckett's theatrical notebooks and annotated copies of his plays which provide a unique insight into his attitude toward the staging of his plays, the ways he himself interpreted his texts and approached theatrical practice.
·the French text of the novel Mercier et Camier, which both biographically and aesthetically appeared at a very significant moment in Beckett's career and indicates a crucial development in his writing
·the matter of tone in Beckett's drama, offering a new reading of the ways in which this elusive property emerges and can be read in the relationship between published text, canon and performance

Author Biography

Dr David Addyman is Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London.Dr Fifield is a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford, where he runs the international seminar series Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies. He was organiser of the international conference Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive and is the editor of a Samuel Beckett special issue of Modernism/modernity, the official journal of the Modernist Studies Association.

Table of Contents

IntroductionA Euclidean Logic? Beckett's Mathematics of the Stage (Professor C. J. Ackerley)Stations of a Mourner's Cross: Death, Loss and Ireland in Beckett's Drama (Dr Graley Herren)Erotics and Aesthetics in Beckett and Bataille (Dr Peter Fifield)Translating Duthuit: New Figures in Beckett's Philosophical Landscape (Dr David Addyman)Amnesia, Somnambulism, Fugue: Beckett and Silent Film (Dr Ulrika Maude)Beckett and the Influence of New Media, 1956-1960 (Dr Matthew Feldman)Sweet Thing Theology: Beckett, E. M. Cioran and the Lives of the Saints (Dr David Wheatley)Textual Performances: Samuel Beckett's Theatrical Notebooks (Dr Mark Nixon)Franco-Irish Beckett: Mercier et/and Camier in 1945-6 (Professor Andrew Gibson)'It all': Tone in Beckett's Drama (Dr Iain Bailey)Wyndham Lewis’s Pseudocouple: The Childermass as a Precursor of Waiting for Godot (Yoshiki Tajiri)NotesIndex