The Making of Samuel Beckett's Not I / Pas Moi, That Time / Cette Fois and Footfalls / Pas (Beckett Manuscript Project, 10)

Little, James

ISBN 10: 1350269050 / ISBN 13: 9781350269057

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 18395948887

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Making of Samuel Beckett's Not I / Pas Moi, That Time / Cette Fois and Footfalls / Pas (Beckett Manuscript Project, 10)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350269050
• ISBN 13: 9781350269057
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This volume of the BDMP series charts the genesis of three iconic Beckett plays: Not I (1973), That Time (1976) and Footfalls (1976), all translated into French by their author. Including analyses of abandoned archival precursors – the 'Kilcool' drafts (1963) and the 'Petit Odéon' Fragments (1967–1968) – the book covers a crucial period in Beckett's playwriting career, during which his long-held ambition to stage a mouth babbling in the dark became a catalyst for some of his most innovative work. This volume provides a comprehensive guide to the history of the three plays, tracking their development from compositional manuscripts through to publication and performance.

The book contends that these plays should be seen as stagings of the subject–object breakdown explored in Beckett's early writing. Drawing on the notes he took on psychology and psychoanalysis in 1934–1935, it examines the many psychological and psychoanalytic concepts that are used in the author's later stagings of the mind. The plays are analysed through the lens of enactive cognition: not as representations of particular psychological conditions, but as pieces which encourage active interpretation on the part of their audiences. By staging minds in states of breakdown that resist diagnosis, Not I / Pas moi, That Time / Cette fois and Footfalls / Pas enact the subject–object breakdown that is such a key part of Beckett's aesthetics.

About the Authors

James Little is Assistant Professor in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus.

Mark Nixon is Professor of Modern Literature and Beckett Studies, and Director of the Beckett International Foundation, at the University of Reading, UK.

Dirk Van Hulle is Professor of English Literature at the Centre for Manuscript Genetics, University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is President of the European Society for Textual Scholarship and his previous books include Textual Awareness (2004).