The Irish Beckett (Irish Studies) - Hardcover

Harrington, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815625286 ISBN 13: 9780815625285

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 1991

Synopsis

Breaking with a powerful tradition among scholars that insists that Beckett's Irishness is no more than an accident of birth, Harrington provides compelling evidence that many of Beckett's best-known texts are deeply involved in Irish issues and situations.

This is the first book to explore Samuel Beckett's major works entirely in their Irish intellectual, cultural, and social milieu. It is a rebuttal to the wholly formalistic literary analysis that has dominated Anglo-American criticism of this major writer, whose writings have long been thought to
belong completely in the international or transnational contexts of Modernism.

Providing a new reading of such works as More Pricks Than Kicks, Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier,
Waiting for Godot, and Endgame, Harrington provides an understanding of Beckett's work in its
representation of Ireland, of Irish history, and of Irish literary traditions. He explains allusions and
annotates place and family names, discusses representations of contrary perceptions and possibilities, and points to Beckett's major contribution to the recurring Irish conception of imminent liberation from inherited, restrictive formulations.

This sophisicated analysis and recovery of the Irish Beckett, which establishes Beckett's fundamental importance to the current debate about Irish cultural identity, will be of interest to teachers and students of contemporary Irish literature and culture, to Beckett scholars, and to all those interested in contemporary literary theory and criticism.

About this title

From the Back Cover

This is the first book to explore Samuel Beckett's major works entirely in their Irish intellectual, cultural, and social milieu. It is a rebuttal to the wholly formalistic literary analysis that has dominated Anglo-American criticism of this major writer, whose writings have long been thought to belong completely in the international or transnational contexts of Modernism.

About the Author

John P. Harrington is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Cooper Union in New York, where he is also Director of the Center for Writing and Speaking. He is the editor of The English Traveler in Ireland: Accounts of Ireland and the Irish from the Elizabethan to the Victorian Eras, and Modern Irish Drama.

About this edition

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0815625286
• ISBN 13: 9780815625285
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224