This volume contains a selection of articles delivered over five years (2005-2009) of an annual seminar hosted by the University of Oxford, and chaired by Matthew Feldmand and Erik Tonning. The book has focussed upon Beckett's formative intellectual development (particularly in the 1930s) and his subsequent influence across several cultural fields ((particularly since the 1950s).

The thematic part of this volume of "Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui" is devoted mainly to Beckett's texts of the forties and later, and particularly to those he composed after his adoption of the French language. The essays presented in this part of the current issue attempt to see Beckett as a writer among other authors with whom he connects or competes, to examine his relations with artists, whether Beckett stimulates them or is stimulated by them, and to define his 'posture' and his position in the cultural field. How does the budding francophone writer position himself in the cultural...