Beckett at 100 : revolving it all

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Beckett at 100 : revolving it all

edited by Linda Ben-Zvi and Angela Moorjani

Oxford University Press, 2008

  • : pbk

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

ISBN 9780195325478

Description

The year 2006 marked the centenary of the birth of Nobel-Prize winning playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett. To commemorate the occasion, this collection brings together twenty-three leading international Beckett scholars from ten countries, who take on the centenary challenge of "revolving it all": that is, going "back to Beckett"-the title of an earlier study by critic Ruby Cohn, to whom the book is dedicated-in order to rethink traditional readings and theories; provide new contexts and associations; and reassess his impact on the modern imagination and legacy to future generations. These original essays, most first presented by the Samuel Beckett Working Group at the Dublin centenary celebration, are divided into three sections: (1) Thinking through Beckett, (2) Shifting Perspectives, and (3) Echoing Beckett. As repeatedly in his canon, images precede words. The book opens with stills from films of experimental filmmaker Peter Gidal and unpublished excerpts from Beckett's 1936-37 German Travel Diaries, presented by Beckett biographer James Knowlson, with permission from the Beckett estate. Renowned director and theatre theoretician Herbert Blau follows with his personal Beckett "thinking through." Others in Part I explore Beckett and philosophy (Abbott), the influences of Bergson (Gontarski) and Leibniz (Mori), Beckett and autobiography (Locatelli), and Agamben on post-Holocaust testimony (Jones). Essays in Part II recontextualize Beckett's works in relation to iconography (Moorjani), film theoretician Rudolf Arnheim (Engelberts), Marshall McLuhan (Ben-Zvi), exilic writing (McMullan), Pierre Bourdieu's literary field (Siess), romanticism (Brater), social theorists Adorno and Horkheimer (Degani-Raz), and performance issues (Rodriguez-Gago). Part III relates Beckett's writing to that of Yeats (Okamuro), Paul Auster (Campbell), Caryl Churchill (Diamond), William Saroyan (Bryden), Minoru Betsuyaku and Harold Pinter (Tanaka) and Morton Feldman and Jasper Johns (Laws). Finally, Beckett himself becomes a character in other playwrights' works (Zeifman). Taken together these essays make a clear case for the challenges and rewards of thinking through Beckett in his second century.

Table of Contents

  • IMAGES: FOR RUBY COHN
  • Still for Ruby
  • Beckett the Tourist: Bamberg and W:urzburg
  • PART I. THINKING THROUGH BECKETT
  • Apnea and True Illusion: Breath(less) in Beckett
  • From Contumacy to Shame: Reading Beckett's Testimonies with Agamben
  • Projections: Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and Not I as Autobiographies
  • "I am Not a Philosopher"
  • Recovering Beckett's Bergsonism
  • No Body Is at Rest: The Legacy of Leibniz's Force in Beckett's Oeuvre
  • PART II. SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES
  • Bounded Boundlessness: Reflecting on Counterpoint and Iconography in Beckett's Play
  • Beckett's Romanticism
  • Film and Film: Beckett and Early Film Theory
  • Beckett's Theatre: Embodying Alterity
  • Beckett's Posture in the French Literary Field
  • The Spear of Telephus in Krapp's Last Tape
  • Refiguring the Stage Body through the Mechanical Re-Production of Memory
  • PART III. ECHOING BECKETT
  • Words and Music,...but the clouds..., and Yeats's "The Tower"
  • Beckett--Feldman--Johns
  • Ontological Fear and Anxiety in the Theatre of Beckett, Betsuyaku, and Pinter
  • The Mid-Century Godot: Beckett and Saroyan
  • Beckett, McLuhan, and Television: The Medium, the Message, and "the Mess"
  • Beckett and Caryl Churchill along the Moebius Strip
  • Beckett and Paul Auster: Fathers and Sons and the Creativity of Misreading
  • Staging Sam: Beckett as Dramatic Character
  • CONTRIBUTORS
  • INDEX
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780195325485

Description

The year 2006 marked the centenary of the birth of Nobel-Prize winning playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett. To commemorate the occasion, this collection brings together twenty-three leading international Beckett scholars from ten countries, who take on the centenary challenge of "revolving it all": that is, going "back to Beckett"-the title of an earlier study by critic Ruby Cohn, to whom the book is dedicated-in order to rethink traditional readings and theories; provide new contexts and associations; and reassess his impact on the modern imagination and legacy to future generations. These original essays, most first presented by the Samuel Beckett Working Group at the Dublin centenary celebration, are divided into three sections: (1) Thinking through Beckett, (2) Shifting Perspectives, and (3) Echoing Beckett. As repeatedly in his canon, images precede words. The book opens with stills from films of experimental filmmaker Peter Gidal and unpublished excerpts from Beckett's 1936-37 German Travel Diaries, presented by Beckett biographer James Knowlson, with permission from the Beckett estate. Renowned director and theatre theoretician Herbert Blau follows with his personal Beckett "thinking through." Others in Part I explore Beckett and philosophy (Abbott), the influences of Bergson (Gontarski) and Leibniz (Mori), Beckett and autobiography (Locatelli), and Agamben on post-Holocaust testimony (Jones). Essays in Part II recontextualize Beckett's works in relation to iconography (Moorjani), film theoretician Rudolf Arnheim (Engelberts), Marshall McLuhan (Ben-Zvi), exilic writing (McMullan), Pierre Bourdieu's literary field (Siess), romanticism (Brater), social theorists Adorno and Horkheimer (Degani-Raz), and performance issues (Rodriguez-Gago). Part III relates Beckett's writing to that of Yeats (Okamuro), Paul Auster (Campbell), Caryl Churchill (Diamond), William Saroyan (Bryden), Minoru Betsuyaku and Harold Pinter (Tanaka) and Morton Feldman and Jasper Johns (Laws). Finally, Beckett himself becomes a character in other playwrights' works (Zeifman). Taken together these essays make a clear case for the challenges and rewards of thinking through Beckett in his second century.

Table of Contents

  • IMAGES: FOR RUBY COHN
  • PART I. THINKING THROUGH BECKETT
  • PART II. SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES
  • PART III. ECHOING BECKETT
  • CONTRIBUTORS
  • INDEX

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