Beckett and Phenomenology

Existentialism and poststructuralism have provided the two main theoretical approaches to Samuel Beckett's work. These influential philosophical movements, however, owe a great debt to the phenomenological tradition. This volume, with contributions by major international scholars, examines the phenomenal in Beckett's literary worlds, comparing and contrasting his writing with key figures including Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It advances an analysis of hitherto unexplored phenomenological themes, such as nausea, immaturity and sleep, in Beckett's work. Through an exploration of specific thinkers and Beckett's own artistic method, it offers the first sustained and comprehensive account of Beckettian phenomenology.

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Beckettian Phenomenologies? Ulrika Maude (University of Durham) and Matthew Feldman (University of Northampton) PART I: BECKETT AND PHENOMENOLOGY 1. ‘But what was this pursuit of meaning, in this indifference to meaning?': Beckett, Husserl and ‘Meaning Creation', Matthew Feldman (University of Northampton) 2. Phenomenologies of the Nothing: Democritus, Heidegger, Beckett, Shane Weller (University of Kent at Canterbury) 3. Beckett and Sartre: The Nauseous Character of All Flesh, Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, University of London) 4. ‘Material of a Strictly Peculiar Order': Beckett, Merleau-Ponty and Perception, Ulrika Maude (University of Durham) PART II: BECKETT'S PHENOMENOLOGIES 5. Between Art-world and Life-world: Beckett's Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Mark Nixon (University of Reading) 6. Murphydurke, or towards a Phenomenology of Immaturity, Jean-Michel Rabaté (University of Pennsylvania) 7. Bodily Histories: Beckett and the Phenomenological Approach to the Other, Steven Matthews (Oxford Brookes University) 8. What Remains of Beckett: Evasion and History, Daniel Katz (Université de Paris VII) 9. Beckett's Ghost Dramas: Monitoring a Phenomenology of Sleep, Paul Sheehan (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) 10. Living the Unnamable: A Phenomenology of Reading, Paul Stewart (University of Nicosia) 11. The ‘Distinct Context of Relevant Knowledge': Beckett's ‘Yellow' and the Phenomenology of Annotation, Chris Ackerley (University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand) Index