Beckett and Death

Description

Death is indisputably central to Beckett's writing and reception. This collection of research considers a number of Beckett's poems, novels, plays and short stories through considerations of mortality and death. Chapters explore the theme of deathliness in relation to Beckett's work as a whole, through three main approaches. The first of these situates Beckett's thinking about death in his own writing and reading processes, particularly with respect to manuscript drafts and letters. The second on the death of the subject in Beckett links dominant 'poststructural' readings of Beckett's writing to the textual challenge exemplified by the The Unnamable. A final approach explores psychology and death, with emphasis on deathly states like catatonia and Cotard's Syndrome that recur in Beckett's work. Beckett and Death offers a range of cutting-edge approaches to the trope of mortality, and a unique insight into the relationship of this theme to all aspects of Beckett's literature.

Steven Barfield is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Westminster, UK. Matthew Feldman is Professorial Teaching Fellow, Norwegian Study Centre, University of York, UK. Philip Tew is Professor of English (Post-1900 Literature) at Brunel University, UK, Director of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing and Director of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies. His many publications as both author and editor include Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2013) and (co-edited with Emily Horton and Leigh Wilson) The 1980s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2014).

'The sheer breadth of material and approaches identifies this collection as a useful resource for Beckettians of all critical persuasions.' -- Irish Studies Review ... a highly original and compelling collection of essays... a very strong collection, shedding new and original critical light on this so fundamental yet so highly contested element of Beckett's work. -- Routledge ABES There is certainly plenty of new life in the essays collected here, all of which in their different ways address the oldest of subjects, one which never goes out of fashion, but one which has never to the best of my knowledge been given, as it were, an innings to itself by way of eleven contributors and three umpires... -- Textual Practice 24(5)