Courses

The work of the Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) defies categorization. To some, he is primarily a playwright: his most popular plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame have helped define the controversial term “theater of the absurd”. To others he is a novelist: his Trilogy represents the zenith (or nadir, depending how you look at it) of the modernist novel. To some, Beckett is the last modernist writer, but to others he is the first postmodernist. To some, he is a quintessentially Irish writer (not only was he born in Ireland, but he did work with, and was influenced by, James Joyce) yet he mostly wrote in French and spent his life — indeed, risked his life, participating in the Resistance — in France. His most famous texts are clearly a form of literary philosophy (but which kind of philosophy exactly? Many have claimed Beckett for their own field!) unless they are a form of psychology, as others — including some psychoanalytic theorists — would claim, or even perhaps a form of history that never calls places and events by their name.

This course is an unorthodox survey of Beckett’s oeuvre and an introduction to the splintered world of Beckett Studies. We will read all major prose works, including Molloy, Watt, the Trilogy and How It Is, the major plays, including Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days and Not I, as well as many of his shorter pieces in prose, for TV and theater. We will look at Beckett as a philosopher, a satirist, a historian, a psychologist, a modernist, a postmodernist, a follower, a precursor, and some variants of the above. Readings by Beckett — mostly — as well as Joyce, Kafka, BS Johnson and JM Coetzee. Secondary readings by many authors, including Adorno, Anzieu, Badiou, Bion, Blanchot, etc.

All required reading in English.