Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive [Hardcover]

This volume comprises ten essays challenging the dominant account of Samuel Beckett as a figure that cannot be read historically by drawing on new archival materials and situating his finished works in their historical context.Beckett in History, Memory, Archive; S.Kennedy & K.Weiss Between Gospel and Prohibition: Beckett in Nazi Germany 1936-1937; M.Nixon Beckett's 'Brilliant Obscurantics': Watt and the Problem of Propaganda; J.McNaughton 'Faintly Struggling Things': Trauma, Testimony and Inscrutable Life in Beckett's The Unnamable; A.Garrison Beckett's Theatre 'After Auschwitz'; J.Blackman Samuel Beckett, the Archive, and the Problem of History; R.Reginio Archives of the End: Embodied History in Beckett's Plays; J.Boulter 'Humanity in Ruins': The Historical Body in Beckett's Fiction; K.Weiss Does Beckett Studies Require a Subject? Mourning Ireland in the Texts for Nothing; S.Kennedy Writing Relics: Mapping the Composition History of Beckett's Endgame; D.Van Hulle 'Agnostic Quietism' and Samuel Beckett's Early Development; M.Feldman

The essays in this collection, individually and collectively, revitalize Beckett Studies with a fresh transfusion of new ideas.The authors successfully recuperate the Historical Beckett - an artist attuned to, engaged with, and indeed produced by his history. - Graley Herren, Associate Professor of English, Xavier University