Synopses & Reviews
The book covers Beckett's early fiction, mature fiction, theatre and his spare late prose works, situating Beckett in a philosophical tradition and literary tradition that has argued for the creative value of stupidity; a key concept in the thinking of philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Deleuze, and central to the practice of writers such as Wordsworth, Flaubert, Baudelaire and Joyce. The book investigates the relationship between verbal cliché, memory and authority in Beckett's prose and drama, arguing that by consciously manipulating the language of cliché, Beckett can interrogate the assumptions made in the discourses of social and intellectual authority without assuming a superior and complacent authority of his own.
Synopsis
This new book situates Beckett in a philosophical and literary tradition that has argued for the creative value of stupidity, a key concept in the thinking of philosophers such as Wittgenstein. It investigates the relationship between verbal cliche, revealing the strategies he used to challenge intellectual and social authority in his works.
About the Author
Elizabeth Barry is a Lecturer in English at the University of Warwick, UK.
Table of Contents
Introduction * Cliché, Consensus and Realism * Cliché and Memory * Cliché and the Language of Religion * Beyond Cliché: Authority, Agency and the Fall of Rhetoric * Conclusion