ABSTRACT

Samuel Beckett: A Casebook may be characterized as a new collection of essays by a generation of Beckett scholars who did not have access to the author. This text demarcates the line between the critical work produced when Beckett was alive, and the critical work produced within ten years of the author's death. This collection is distinctive, too, because the text offers a variety of critical perspectives which engage and problematize Beckett's dramatic canon. From Deleuzean rhizomatics to New Historicism to the crucial question of gender-each reading re-positions Beckett's plays and forces us to rethink our standard interpretations of Beckett's drama.

chapter |24 pages

“Speak no more”

The Hermeneutical Function of Narrative in Samuel Beckett's Endgame

chapter |18 pages

“A place without an occupant”

Krapp's Rhizome Identity

chapter |30 pages

Voices out of the Air

Freedom, Death, and Constraint in all that Fall

chapter |26 pages

Performing Vision(s)

Perspectives on Spectatorship in Beckett's Theatre

chapter |20 pages

“Sadism Demands a Story”

Looking at Gender and Pain in Samuel Beckett's Plays

chapter |24 pages

Bodily Functions

A Reading of Gender Performativity in Samuel Beckett's Rockaby

chapter |22 pages

Empire of Light

Luminosity and Space in Beckett's Theater