ABSTRACT
Beckett’s narrative works display a distinctive affinity with the question of Stimmung as they consider the aesthetic structure of harmony as a metaphor for human existence in the modern age. Murphy and Watt describe the loss of harmonic structures and subsequent attempts to re-establish harmony. The novels of the ‘trilogy,’ then, bring the affective dimension of experience into clearer focus by closely engaging the reader in the process of aesthetic reception. This chapter discusses the fundamental role of the notion of Stimmung or attunement in the ways in which these texts reflect on existence and the aesthetics of literary reception.
