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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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.
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Keywords
Table of contents (18 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Beckett & Language Politics: Editors’ Preface
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Front Matter
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Beckett & Biopolitics: Editors’ Preface
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Front Matter
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Beckett & Geopolitics: Editors’ Preface
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Front Matter
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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
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.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Beckett and Politics
Editors: William Davies, Helen Bailey
Series Title: New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47110-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-47109-5Published: 27 October 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-47112-5Published: 27 October 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-47110-1Published: 26 October 2020
Series ISSN: 2731-3182
Series E-ISSN: 2731-3190
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 319
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Twentieth-Century Literature, Literature, general, Drama, European Literature, Performing Arts