Samuel Beckett

by Jennifer Birkett, Kate Ince

Bringing together seminal writings on Beckett from the 1950s and 1960s with critical readings from the 1980s and 1990s, this collection is inspired by a wide variety of literary-theoretical approaches and covers the whole range of Beckett's creative work. Following an up-to-date review and analysis of Beckett criticism, fifteen extracts of Beckett criticism are introduced and set in context by editors' headnotes. The book aims to make easily accessible to students and scholars stimulating and innovative writing on the work of Samuel Beckett, representing the wide range of new perspectives opened up by contemporary critical theory: philosophical, political and psychoanalytic criticism, feminist and gender studies, semiotics, and reception theory.

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 8, 1999

About the author

Jennifer Birkett is Emeritus Professor of French Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. She held the Established Chair of French Studies from 1990 to 2011, having previously been Professor of French at the University of Strathclyde. Her research is grounded in French Studies and is strongly interdisciplinary, focusing on the relations between history, politics, ideology, and narrative form. Her specialist interests include the fin de siècle, women’s writing, eighteenth-century fiction, modern drama, and Franco-British cultural exchanges. She has held senior academic leadership roles, including President of the Association of Professors and Heads of Departments of French, and played a key role in establishing the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Arts and Humanities. Her publications include major studies of Samuel Beckett, French Decadence, and the writer Margaret Storm Jameson, alongside influential edited volumes and essays published internationally.