Description
This book argues that the abject, decrepit body in Beckett does not signal the impossibility of agency but demands its reconceptualisation. Analysing the representation of the body in relation to the environment in Beckett's work, the author interrogates the power to do and act. Separating dynamic interaction from willed intention, Amanda Dennis shows how Beckett's oeuvre refashions subjectivity in dialogue with a disintegrating environment. The book provides a phenomenological reading of Beckett to argue that sensation and embodiment support our interactions with our material world, enabling possibilities for embodied agency in collaboration with our physical and linguistic surroundings.
Author: Amanda M. Dennis
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 05/22/2023
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.54d
ISBN13: 9781474463003
ISBN10: 1474463002
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Literary Criticism | Modern | 20th Century
- Literary Criticism | European | General
About the Author
Amanda M. Dennis is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the American University of Paris. She co-edited the recent volume Samuel Beckett and the Nonhuman (Brill, 2020), and her articles have appeared in the Journal of Modern Literature, the Journal of Beckett Studies and Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui, among other places. She has held fellowships and visiting lectureships in France, the US, the UK and Spain, and she is the author of the novel Her Here (Bellevue Literary Press, 2021).