Samuel Beckett's Critical Aesthetics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Tim Lawrence

   Pages 1-21

3. Representation and Resistance: Beckett as Reader and Critic

   • Tim Lawrence

   Pages 23-78

4. Beckett’s Aesthetic of Vision: Figuration and Surrealist Influence

   • Tim Lawrence

   Pages 79-122

5. Transitions and Abstractions: Periodical Culture and Beckett’s Revisions of the Visual

   • Tim Lawrence

   Pages 123-166

6. “This Running Against the Walls of Our Cage”: Beckett at the Boundary

   • Tim Lawrence

   Pages 167-208

7. Conclusion

   • Tim Lawrence

   Pages 209-212

8. Back Matter

   Pages 213-240

   PDF

This book considers how Samuel Beckett’s critical essays, dialogues and reflections drew together longstanding philosophical discourses about the nature of representation, and fostered crucial, yet overlooked, connections between these discourses and his fiction and poetry. It also pays attention to Beckett’s writing for little-magazines in France from the 1930s to the 1950s, before going on to consider how the style of Beckett’s late prose recalls and develops figures and themes in his critical writing. By providing a long-overdue assessment of Beckett’s work as a critic, this study shows how Beckett developed a new aesthetic in knowing dialogue with ideas including phenomenology, Kandinsky’s theories of abstraction, and avant-garde movements such as Surrealism. This book will be illuminating for students and researchers interested not just in Beckett, but in literary modernism, the avant-garde, European visual culture and philosophy.

• Philosophy
• Ethics
• Prose
• Canon
• Translation
• British and Irish Literature

“It will be of valuable use to Beckettian scholars and students. It will also be of interest to students and researchers in literary modernism, the avant-garde, European visual culture and philosophy. … this book is well worth reading for the insight it gives into the context of Beckett’s essays and their ongoing discussion of issues pertaining to vision and aesthetics.” (Pascale Sardin, Cercles, cercles.com, July 15, 2019) “With this book, Tim Lawrence delivers a long overdue examination of Beckett’s critical writings. Samuel Beckett’s Critical Aesthetics not only offers a sensitive, perceptive reading of these texts, but also reveals the way in which they establish an aesthetic and philosophical dialogue with Beckett’s creative enterprise. Drawing on a wide range of archival and critical sources, Lawrence’s study will surely establish itself as the indispensable guide to Beckett’s critical thought.” (Dr Mark Nixon, Co-Director, Beckett International Foundation)

“Tim Lawrence has written the first sustained analysis of Samuel Beckett’s critical writings, which are masterfully read within the context of their intellectual history. His readings are subtle, nuanced and illuminating. This book will offer an indispensable point of reference for future critical studies of Beckett’s work.” (Dr Ulrika Maude, Reader in Modernism and Twentieth-Century Literature, University of Bristol, UK)

• University of York, York, United Kingdom

  Tim Lawrence

Tim Lawrence is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, University of York, UK. He has articles and reviews published in outlets including the Journal of Beckett Studies and Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui. His research interests lie in the European avant-garde, phenomenology, and twentieth-century visual culture.

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