Unwording the World

Unwording the World PDF Author: Carla Locatelli
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512808865
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This comprehensive study of Beckett's art proposes a doubly contextualized reading of his later works: Carla Locatelli reads late Beckett through his previous writings, and relates them to the literary, philosophical, and critical community which surrounds him. To appreciate his contribution as an epistemological rhetorician, she proposes a multidisciplinary approach that draws upon a remarkably wide range of theorists, including Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Peirce, Jakobson, Deleuze, Lacan, and Derrida. In Part One of this study, Locatelli traces the evolution of Beckett's writing, proposing that his principal concern devolves more and more upon the essential character of representation and its role in the constitution and signification of the subject. Part One also provides a history of this thematic, showing how Beckett's writing effects a radical displacement of representation from function to object of discourse. In Part Two, Locatelli focuses on Beckett's fiction after the Nobel Prize of 1969 , and on the epistemological and aesthetic issues in Company (1980), ill seen ill said (1981), and Worstward Ho (1983). She examines his "unwording" in this "Second Trilogy," and defines it as a process of subtraction that probes into the most basic mode of our being in the world. Here Beckett proposes, as Locatelli suggests , a very real hermeneutics of experience, beyond the "schools of suspicion" which are still influencing some postmodernist thinking. This volume will be of particular value to scholars and students of twentieth­-century English literature, French literature, and literary theory .

Unwording the World

Unwording the World PDF Author: Carla Locatelli
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512808865
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This comprehensive study of Beckett's art proposes a doubly contextualized reading of his later works: Carla Locatelli reads late Beckett through his previous writings, and relates them to the literary, philosophical, and critical community which surrounds him. To appreciate his contribution as an epistemological rhetorician, she proposes a multidisciplinary approach that draws upon a remarkably wide range of theorists, including Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Peirce, Jakobson, Deleuze, Lacan, and Derrida. In Part One of this study, Locatelli traces the evolution of Beckett's writing, proposing that his principal concern devolves more and more upon the essential character of representation and its role in the constitution and signification of the subject. Part One also provides a history of this thematic, showing how Beckett's writing effects a radical displacement of representation from function to object of discourse. In Part Two, Locatelli focuses on Beckett's fiction after the Nobel Prize of 1969 , and on the epistemological and aesthetic issues in Company (1980), ill seen ill said (1981), and Worstward Ho (1983). She examines his "unwording" in this "Second Trilogy," and defines it as a process of subtraction that probes into the most basic mode of our being in the world. Here Beckett proposes, as Locatelli suggests , a very real hermeneutics of experience, beyond the "schools of suspicion" which are still influencing some postmodernist thinking. This volume will be of particular value to scholars and students of twentieth­-century English literature, French literature, and literary theory .

Nohow On

Nohow On PDF Author: Samuel Beckett
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802198341
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
The three pieces that comprise this volume are among the most delicate and disquieting of Samuel Beckett’s later prose. Each confined to a single consciousness in a closed space, these stories are a testament to the mind’s boundless expanse. In Company, a man—"one on his back in the dark"—hears a voice speak to him, describing significant moments from his lifetime, and yet these memories may be merely fables and figments invented for the sake of companionship. Ill Seen Ill Said tells of a solitary old woman who paces around a cabin, burdened by existence itself. And Worstword Ho explores a world devoid of rationality and purpose, containing the famous directive: "Try again. Fail Again. Fail Better." The quintessential distillation of Beckett’s philosophy on human existence and the ultimate example of his minimalist approach to fiction, Nohow On is a vital collection, concerned with conception and perception, memory and imagination.

Beckett and Poststructuralism

Beckett and Poststructuralism PDF Author: Anthony Uhlmann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521640763
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In Beckett and Poststructuralism, Anthony Uhlmann offers a reading of Beckett in relation to French philosophy, particularly the work of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Levinas, and Derrida. Uhlmann offers a work of literary criticism that is also a piece of intellectual history, emphasizing how Beckett develops a kind of critical thinking which differs from yet is just as powerful as that of philosophers who, along with Beckett, found themselves faced with sets of ethical problems which were thrown into sharp relief in post-war France. Uhlmann explores the links between ethics and physical existence in Beckett, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, and between ethics and language in Beckett, Derrida and Levinas, showing how post-war French philosophy was powerfully affected by Beckett's work. Literature is not reduced to philosophy or vice versa; rather Uhlmann considers how they interrelate and overlap, informing and deforming one another, and how both encounter history.

Cruelty and Desire in the Modern Theater

Cruelty and Desire in the Modern Theater PDF Author: Laurens De Vos
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson
ISBN: 1611470455
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Departing from a refreshing look at the ideas of Antonin Artaud, this book provides a thorough analysis of how both Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett are indebted to his legacy. In juxtaposing these playwrights, De Vos minutely points out how both in their own way struggle with coming to terms with Artaud. A key concept in Lacanian psychoanalytic theories, desire lies at the root of the Theatre of Cruelty; Kane and Beckett prove that desire and cruelty are inextricably linked to one another, but that they appear in radically different disguises. Relying on Kane and Beckett, this book not only sheds a light on the precise intentions behind Artaud's project, it also maps out the structural parallels and dichotomies between the Theatre of Cruelty and the literary genre of tragedy.

Beckett and Decay

Beckett and Decay PDF Author: Kathryn White
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441112952
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
The word 'decay' is often used by critics in general reference to Beckett's thematic emphasis and philosophical outlook. However, this book explores the idea of decay as the fundamental core of Beckett's work, dominating it thematically, linguistically and artistically. Kathryn White explores Beckett's representation of physical decay, mental and spiritual deterioration and finally the idea that 'decay' is to be found in language itself. This study explores the importance of both theme and form in Beckett's work and considers whether Beckett will, in future generations, be remembered both for his representation of existence and his innovations in language.

Falsifying Beckett

Falsifying Beckett PDF Author: Matthew Feldman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 3838267060
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
The dozen essays brought together here, alongside a newly-written introduction, contextualize and exemplify the recent 'empirical turn' in Beckett studies. Characterized, above all, by recourse to manuscript materials in constructing revisionist interpretations, this approach has helped to transform the study of Samuel Beckett over the past generation. In addition to focusing upon Beckett's early immersion in philosophy and psychology, other chapters similarly analyze his later collaboration with the BBC through the lens of literary history. Falsifying Beckett thus offers new readings of Beckett by returning to his archive of notebooks, letters, and drafts. In reassessing key aspects of his development as one of the 20th century's leading artists, this collection is of interest to all students of Beckett's writing as well as ' historicist' scholars and critics of modernism more generally.

Beckett in the 1990s

Beckett in the 1990s PDF Author: Marius Buning
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789051835663
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description


The Drama in the Text

The Drama in the Text PDF Author: Enoch Brater
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195088921
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In this rich and perceptive study of some of the most haunting fiction written in the late twentieth century, Beckett critic Enoch Brater continues his investigation of the tension between text and script, silence and associational sound. Brater argues with great learning that Beckett's fiction, like his radio plays, demands to be read aloud, since much of the emotional meaning lodges in its tonality. Here the rhythm of Beckett's "labouring heart" finds its performative voice as the reader, now turned listener, collaborates in the creation of a musical composition that must elucidate the stillness of the universe. The Drama in the Text is a book about reciting and recounting, about how we know and what we know when we read a lyrical "text" crafted in prose but sounding like something else instead. Brater ranges across all of Beckett's work, quoting from it liberally, and makes connections mainly with other writers, but also with details drawn from the whole Western cultural heritage. The only book that deals thoroughly with Beckett's complete late fiction, Brater's study opens to a wide literary audience the difficult and elliptical nature of Beckett's mature prose style. For those readers who find Beckett's late fiction "impossible to follow let alone describe", this book will be an authoritative and persuasive guide, providing recognition, insight, and accessibility.

J. M. Coetzee's Politics of Life and Late Modernism in the Contemporary Novel

J. M. Coetzee's Politics of Life and Late Modernism in the Contemporary Novel PDF Author: Marc Farrant
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1399507818
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Surveying the full breadth of J. M. Coetzee's career as both academic and novelist, this book argues for the necessity of rethinking his profound indebtedness to literary modernism in terms of a politics of life. Isolating a particular strain of late modernism, epitomised by Kafka and Beckett, Farrant claims that Coetzee's writings consistently demonstrate an agonistic engagement with the concept of life that involves an entanglement of politics and ethics, which supersedes the singular theoretical frameworks often applied to Coetzee, such as postcolonialism, posthumanism and animal studies. Running throughout his engagement with questions of modernity and colonialism, storytelling and life writing, human and non-human life, religion and post-Enlightenment subjectivity, Coetzee's politics of life yield a new literary cosmopolitanism for the twenty-first century; a powerful commentary on our interrelatedness that emphasises finitude and contingency as fundamental to the way we live together.

The Experientiality of Narrative

The Experientiality of Narrative PDF Author: Marco Caracciolo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110365650
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Recent developments in cognitive narrative theory have called attention to readers' active participation in making sense of narrative. However, while most psychologically inspired models address interpreters' subpersonal (i.e., unconscious) responses, the experiential level of their engagement with narrative remains relatively undertheorized. Building on theories of experience and embodiment within today's "second-generation" cognitive science, and opening a dialogue with so-called "enactivist" philosophy, this book sets out to explore how narrative experiences arise from the interaction between textual cues and readers' past experiences. Caracciolo's study offers a phenomenologically inspired account of narrative, spanning a wide gamut of responses such as the embodied dynamic of imagining a fictional world, empathetic perspective-taking in relating to characters, and "higher-order" evaluations and interpretations. Only by placing a premium on how such modes of engagement are intertwined in experience, Caracciolo argues, can we do justice to narrative's psychological and existential impact on our lives. These insights are illustrated through close readings of literary texts ranging from Émile Zola's Germinal to José Saramago's Blindness.