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Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information Spec SD1 Date 26-july SAMUEL BECKEtt IN CONTEXT When Samuel Beckett first came to international prominence with the success of Waiting for Godot, many critics believed the play was divorced from any recognisable context. The two tramps, and the master and servant they encounter, seemed to represent no one and everyone. Today, critics challenge the assumption that Beckett aimed to break definitively with context, highlighting images, allusions and motifs that tether Beckett’s writings to real people, places and issues in his life. This wide-ranging collection of essays from thirty-seven renowned Beckett scholars reveals how extensively Beckett entered into dialogue with important literary traditions and the realities of his time. Drawing on his major works, as well as on a range of letters and theoretical notebooks, the essays are designed to complement each other, building a broad overview that will allow students and scholars to come away with a better sense of Beckett’s life, writings and legacy. Anthony Uhlmann is a Professor of Literature and the Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. He is the author of a number of works on Samuel Beckett, including Beckett and Poststructuralism (1999) and Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image (2006). © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information Spec SD1 Date 26-july SAMUEL BECKEtt IN CONTEXT Edited by ANTHONY UHLMANN University of Western Sydney © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information Spec SD1 Date 26-july cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107017030 © Cambridge University Press 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Samuel Beckett in context / [edited by] Anthony Uhlmann, University of Western Sydney. pages cm. – (Literature in context) Includes an index. ISBN 978-1-107-01703-0 (hardback) 1. Beckett, Samuel, 1906–1989 – Criticism and interpretation. I. Uhlmann, Anthony, editor of compilation. PR6003.E282Z819 2013 848′.91409–dc23 2012033220 ISBN 978-1-107-01703-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information Spec SD1 Date 26-july Contents Notes on Contributors page ix Permissions and Acknowledgements xix List of Abbreviations xxi Chronology xxiii Introduction 1 Anthony Uhlmann Part I. Landscapes and Formation 1. Childhood and Portora 7 Russell Smith 2. Dublin and Environs 19 John Pilling 3. Trinity College, Dublin 29 S. E. Gontarski 4. École Normale Supérieure 42 Anthony Cordingley 5. Paris, Roussillon, Ussy 53 Jean-Michel Rabaté Part II. Social and Political Contexts 6. Ireland: 1906–1945 65 Patrick Bixby 7. France: 1928–1939 76 Garin Dowd v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information vi Contents 8. England: 1933–1936 87 Peter Marks 9. Germany: Circa 1936–1937 99 Mark Nixon 10. France: World War Two 109 Lois Gordon 11. France, Europe, the World: 1945–1989 126 Julian Murphet Part III. Milieus and Movements 12. Modernism: Dublin / Paris / London 139 Paul Sheehan 13. The Joyce Circle 150 Sam Slote 14. Post–World War Two Paris 160 Shane Weller 15. Staging Plays 173 Anthony Uhlmann 16. Working on Radio 183 Ulrika Maude 17. Working on Film and Television 192 Graley Herren Part IV. ‘The Humanities I had’: Literature 18. Irish Literature 205 Seán Kennedy 19. English Literature 218 Mark Byron 20. French Literature 229 Angela Moorjani 21. Italian Literature 241 Daniela Caselli © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information Contents vii Part V. ‘The Humanities I had’: Arts 22. Contemporary Visual Art 255 Nico Israel 23. Music 266 Catherine Laws 24. Cinema 279 Matthijs Engelberts 25. Popular Culture 289 Jane Goodall Part VI. ‘The Humanities I had’: Systems of Knowledge and Belief 26. Philosophy 301 Matthew Feldman 27. Psychology 312 Laura Salisbury 28. The Bible 324 Chris Ackerley 29. The Occult 337 Minako Okamuro 30. Science and Mathematics 348 Hugh Culik Part VII. Language and Form 31. Language and Representation 361 Daniel Katz 32. Self-Translation 370 Corinne Scheiner 33. Theatre Forms 381 Enoch Brater © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information viii Contents Part VIII. Reception and Remains 34. Initial Reception 397 James Gourley 35. Influence 405 Michael D’Arcy 36. Notebooks and Other Manuscripts 417 Dirk Van Hulle 37. Letters 428 Lois More Overbeck Index 441 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information Spec SD1 Date 26-july Notes on Contributors Chris Ackerley is Professor of English at the University of Otago. He has annotated Beckett’s Murphy and Watt (recently republished by the University of Edinburgh Press); he is, with S. E. Gontarski, author of the Grove Press and Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett; and he is com- pleting a study of Samuel Beckett and science. A specialist annotator, he is part of the EMiC (Editing Manuscripts in Canada) project, prepar- ing three works by Malcolm Lowry, including the long-lost but recently rediscovered novel In Ballast to the White Sea. Patrick Bixby is an Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University and author of Samuel Beckett and the Postcolonial Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2009). He has served as an assistant to the editors of The Letters of Samuel Beckett (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and has published essays on Beckett, Joyce, Rushdie and others. He is currently writing a book on Nietzsche and Irish modernism. Enoch Brater is the Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature at the University of Michigan. He has recently published Ten Ways of Thinking About Samuel Beckett: The Falsetto of Reason (Methuen), and is well known for his seminal studies in the field, including Beyond Minimalism: Beckett’s Late Style in the Theater and The Drama in the Text: Beckett’s Late Fiction, both from Oxford University Press. Mark Byron lectures in Modern and Contemporary Literature in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. His current work is in developing digital scholarly editions of complex Modernist texts and their manuscripts, as well as critical and theoretical reflection on scholarly editing techniques. His ARC Discovery Project (2011–13) aims to produce a longitudinal study of literary text structures from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and the range of editorial methods (analogue and digital) used to represent those texts. ix © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01703-0 - Samuel Beckett in Context Edited by Anthony Uhlmann Frontmatter More information x Notes on Contributors Daniela Caselli is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Beckett’s Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism (Manchester University Press, 2005) and Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes’s Bewildering Corpus (Arena, 2009). She has published articles on Samuel Beckett, literary theory, modernism and gen- der. She is the editor of Beckett and Nothing: Trying to Understand Beckett (Manchester University Press, 2011) and co-editor, with Steven Connor and Laura Salisbury, of Other Becketts (Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2001). With Daniela La Penna she has co-edited Twentieth-Century Poetic Translation: Literary Cultures in Italian and English (Continuum, 2008). She is the treasurer of the British Association of Modernist Studies. Anthony Cordingley is a Lecturer in English and Translation at the Université Paris 8–Vincennes-Saint-Denis. He has published on Beckett in specialist and general journals. He is co-editor of the elec- tronic genetic edition of Beckett’s Comment c’est/How It Is, and his monograph on that text will be published by Antwerp University Press. He is completing a book on Beckett’s education in languages and phi- losophy and its effects upon on his fiction. Cordingley has also edited a collection of articles for Continuum’s Studies in Translation series enti- tled Self-translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture (2012).