Understanding Samuel Beckett - Paperback

by Alan Astro (Author)

Understanding Samuel Beckett presents an overview of the work of the Irish author whose most famous novels and plays-Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Waiting for Godot, and Endgame-are discussed in depth, alongside some less known earlier texts and later, shorter pieces. Alan Astro pays particular attention to Beckett's relationship with other authors (Dante, Joyce, Proust), his debt to philosophers (Sartre, Descartes, Pascal), his bilingualism, the psychoanalytic texture of his writing, and his manipulation of the first-person pronoun. Astro concludes with a discussion of Stirrings Still, Beckett's last text, in which he evokes his own impending demise.

Front Jacket

An enlightening study of the Irish writer's complete body of work in drama and fiction

Author Biography

Alan Astro is a professor of French language, literature, and culture at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and the author of Yiddish South of the Border: An Anthology of Latin American Yiddish Writing.