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Palgrave Macmillan

Beckett and Politics

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

  • Fosters constructive dialogues within and around a complex nexus of critical, disciplinary and political approaches to Beckett
  • Reveals the full extent of the influence of politics not only on the writer himself, but also on the critical study and performance of his works, and on literature more widely
  • Incorporates a variety of scholarly approaches and methodologies to Beckett, including archival, historical, textual, theoretical, narratological, formal and theatre / performance perspectives

Part of the book series: New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature (NDIIAL)

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Table of contents (18 chapters)

  1. Beckett & Geopolitics: Editors’ Preface

Keywords

About this book

This collection of essays reveals the extent to which politics is fundamental to our understanding of Samuel Beckett’s life and writing. Bringing together internationally established and emerging scholars, Beckett and Politics considers Beckett’s work as it relates to three broad areas of political discourse: language politics, biopolitics and geopolitics. Through a range of critical approaches, including performance studies, political theory, gender theory, historicizing approaches and language theory, the book demonstrates how politics is more than just another thematic lens: it is fundamentally and structurally intrinsic to Beckett’s life, his texts and subsequent interpretations of them. This important collection of essays demonstrates that Beckett’s work is not only ripe for political engagement, but also contains significant opportunities for understanding and illuminating the broader relationships between literature, culture and politics.


Reviews

“This excellent, wide-ranging book showcases the ongoing health and diversity of scholarship in Beckett studies. The volume cuts across archival, theoretical and biographical divides, gathering together original chapters that demonstrate the complexity and significance of the historical and contemporary relationships between Beckett, his work and politics.” (Laura Salisbury, Professor in Modern Literature and Medical Humanities, University of Exeter, UK)

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Reading, Reading, UK

    William Davies

  • Loughborough College of Further and Higher Education, Loughborough, UK

    Helen Bailey

About the editors

William Davies is a research fellow at the University of Reading, UK. His work on Samuel Beckett includes various articles and book chapters, the volume Samuel Beckett and Europe: History, Culture, Tradition (2017), co-edited with Michela Bariselli and Niamh M. Bowe, the monograph Samuel Beckett and the Second World War (2020) and The Poetry of Samuel Beckett (2021), co-edited with James Brophy.

Helen Bailey is an independent scholar and works as an Access to HE tutor at Loughborough College of Further and Higher Education, UK. Her publications appear in various journals and books, including The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary English and Irish Poetry (2013), Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (2019) and The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature (2021). She is currently preparing a book on Beckett, music and spirituality.



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