Revisioning Beckett

Revisioning Beckett reassesses Beckett's career and literary output, particularly his engagement with what might be called decadent modernism. Gontarski approaches Beckett from multiple viewpoints: from his running afoul of the Irish Censorship of Publications Acts in the 1930s through the 1950s, his preoccupations to “find literature in the pornography, or beneath the pornography,” his battles with the Lord Chamberlain in the mid-1950s over London stagings of his first two plays, and his close professional and personal associations with publishers who celebrated the work of the demimonde. Much of that term encompasses an opening to the fullness of human experience denied in previous centuries, and much of that has been sexual or decadent. As Gontarski shows, the aesthetics that emerges from such early career encounters and associations continues to inform Beckett's work and develops into experimental modes that upend literary models and middle-class values, an aesthetics that, furthermore, has inspired any number of visual artists to re-vision Beckett.

Revisioning Beckett reassesses Beckett's career and literary output, particularly his engagement with what might be called decadent modernism. Gontarski approaches Beckett from multiple viewpoints: from his running afoul of the Irish Censorship of Publications Acts in the 1930s through the 1950s, his preoccupations to "find literature in the pornography, or beneath the pornography,†? his battles with the Lord Chamberlain in the mid-1950s over London stagings of his first two plays, and his close professional and personal associations with publishers who celebrated the work of the demimonde. Much of that term encompasses an opening to the fullness of human experience denied in previous centuries, and much of that has been sexual or decadent. As Gontarski shows, the aesthetics that emerges from such early career encounters and associations continues to inform Beckett's work and develops into experimental modes that upend literary models and middle-class values, an aesthetics that, furthermore, has inspired any number of visual artists to re-vision Beckett.

Samuel Beckett’s work has entranced generations of readers with its portrayal of the end times. Beckett’s characters are preoccupied with death, and the specters of cataclysm and extinction overshadow their barren, bleak worlds. Yet somehow, they endure, experiencing surreal and often comic repetitions that seem at once to confront finitude and the infinite, up to the limits of existence. Gabriele Schwab draws on decades of close engagement with Beckett to explore how his work speaks to our current existential anxieties and fears. Interweaving critical analysis with personal reflections, she shows how Beckett’s writing provides unexpected resources for making sense of personal and planetary catastrophes. Moments for Nothing examines the ways Beckett’s works have taken on new meaning in an era of crises—climate change, environmental devastation, and the COVID-19 pandemic—that are defined by both paralyzing stasis and pervasive uncertainty. They also offer a bracing depiction of aging and the end of life, exploring loneliness, vulnerability, and decay. Beckett’s particular vision of the apocalypse and his sense of persistence, Schwab argues, help us understand our times and even, perhaps, provide sanctuary and solace. Moments for Nothing features insightful close readings of iconic works such as Endgame, Happy Days, and the trilogy, as well as lesser-known writings including the thirty-five-second play Breath, which Schwab reconsiders in light of the pandemic.

Offering fresh studies of Samuel Beckett in pre-production, in rehearsal, as an innovator of the script form, and as a speculative director and designer, Beckett's Laboratory reconsiders Beckett's stringent approach to stage direction through the lens of the laboratory and reveals his experimentalism with stage representation and composition. Wakeling argues that acknowledging Beckett's experimental processes, from their composition to their reception, is crucial to understanding the innovative representations of humanity that emerged at different stages in Beckett's practice. Repositioning Beckett's performance oeuvre in relation to philosophy, Wakeling draws upon post-dramatic, symbolist, materialist and post-structural understandings of theatre performance to reappraise Beckett's plays as a composition for performance. The philosophical underpinnings of Beckett's practices are explored through an eclectic mix of familiar and unexplored contemporary theatre productions and films of Beckett's works, including Not I, Nacht und Träume, Happy Days, Footfalls and Catastrophe. Beckett's Laboratory is a provocative examination of Beckett's experimentalism with the human spectacle and his playful reliance upon the interpretative powers of the actors and audience.

Beckett’s Voices / Voicing Beckett uses ‘voice’ as a prism to investigate Samuel Beckett’s work across a range of texts, genres, and cultures. Twenty-one international contributors evaluate Beckett’s contemporary artistic legacy in relation to music, media, performance, and philosophy.

Confinement appears repeatedly in Samuel Beckett's oeuvre – from the asylums central to Murphy and Watt to the images of confinement that shape plays such as Waiting for Godot and Endgame. Drawing on spatial theory and new archival research, Beckett in Confinement explores these recurring concepts of closed space to cast new light on the ethical and political dimensions of Beckett's work. Covering the full range of Beckett's writing career, including two plays he completed for prisoners, Catastrophe and the unpublished 'Mongrel Mime', the book shows how this engagement with the ethics of representing prisons and asylums stands at the heart of Beckett's poetics. "James Little's Beckett in Confinement offers a brilliant analysis of the politics behind Beckett's production of closed space, both as a writer and as a director. It carefully examines the move from writing about closed space to creating an art of confinement. To argue that Beckett's use of confined space is central to the political dynamics of his works, James Little also superbly employs genetic criticism to open up the confined space of the published text and bring highly relevant draft materials back into the critical conversation." Dirk Van Hulle, Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History, University of Oxford, UK "The many characters Beckett invented share one characteristic: they are all imprisoned or trapped in some way, no matter where they are. Samuel Beckett in Confinement: The Politics of Closed Space draws on untapped riches from Beckett's correspondence and the archives to reconsider the obsession with entrapment, coercion and detention central to Beckett's varied oeuvre. In this exciting and illuminating analysis, James Little offers a fresh and original reading of the work's ethical and political dimensions, and shows us why we need to stop thinking about confinement as a metaphysical metaphor." Emilie Morin, Professor of Modern Literature, University of York, UK "Little breaks new ground in this expansive investigation to explore how confinement is a central component of Beckett's political aesthetics ... The reader is guided by a crisp and easy style of writing as Little demonstrates a command of sources which are broad in scope, but negotiated to form a compelling and impactful study." Journal of Beckett Studies

This book of collected essays approaches Beckett’s work through the context of modernism, while situating it in the literary tradition at large. It builds on current debates aiming to redefine ‘modernism’ in connection to concepts such as ‘late modernism’ or ‘postmodernism’. Instead of definitively re-categorizing Beckett under any of these labels, the essays use his diverse oeuvre – encompassing poetry, criticism, prose, theatre, radio and film – as a case study to investigate and reassess the concept of ‘modernism after postmodernism’ in all its complexity, covering a broad range of topics spanning Beckett’s entire career. In addition to more thematic essays about art, history, politics, psychology and philosophy, the collection places his work in relation to that of other modernists such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, as well as to the literary canon in general. It represents an important contribution to both Beckett studies and modernism studies.

Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction provides an overdue investigation into Beckett’s rich influences over American writing. Through in-depth readings of postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, this book situates Beckett’s post-war writing of exhaustion and generation in relation to the emergence of an explosive American avant-garde. In turn, this study provides a valuable insight into the practical realities of Beckett’s dissemination in America, following the author’s long-standing relationship with the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review and its dramatic role in redrawing the possibilities of American culture in the 1960s. While Beckett would be largely removed from his American context, this book follows his vigorous, albeit sometimes awkward, reception alongside the authors and institutions central to shaping his legacies in 20th and 21st century America.