Beckett and the Modern Novel

ISBN-13: 9781107029842 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 228 str.

John Bolin

Opis

Samuel Beckett's narrative innovations are among his most important contributions to twentieth-century literature. Yet contemporary Beckett scholarship rarely considers the effect of his literary influences on the evolution of his narrative techniques, focusing instead on Beckett's philosophical implications. In this study, John Bolin challenges the utility of reading Beckett through a narrow philosophical lens, tracing new avenues for understanding Beckett's work and by extension, the form of the modern novel by engaging with English, French, German, and Russian literature. Presenting new empirical evidence drawn from major archives in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States, Bolin demonstrates Beckett's preoccupation with what he termed the 'European novel': a lineage running from Sade to Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Gide, Sartre, and Celine. Through close readings of Beckett's manuscripts and novels up to and including The Unnamable, Bolin provides a new account of how Beckett's fiction grew out of his changing compositional practice, even as he moved beyond early exemplars."

Recenzje

'The strength of Bolin's book lies within its focus on Beckett as a writer, struggling with his material, struggling with his own tendency toward erudition and the 'loutishness of learning', and, ultimately, struggling with the coherence and structures of control of the novel form itself.' Paul Stewart, Journal of Beckett Studies

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. 'The integrity of incoherence': theory and Dream of Fair to Middling Women; 2. 'An ironical radiance': Murphy and the modern novel; 3. 'The creative consciousness': the Watt notebooks; 4. 'Telling the tale': narrators and narration (1943–6); 5. Images of the author; 6. 'Oh it's only a diary': Molloy; 7. 'The art of incarceration': Malone Dies; Conclusion: Beckett and the modern novel; Bibliography.