Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989), who lived in Paris and wrote his plays and novels in French, not because his French was better than his English, but because it was worse. In works such as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Molloy and Malone Dies, he wanted to show the limitations of language, what words could not do, together with the absurdity and humour of the human condition. In part he was reacting to the verbal omnipotence of James Joyce, with whom he’d worked in Paris, and in part to his experience in the French Resistance during World War 2, when he used code, writing not to reveal meaning but to conceal it.
With
Steven Connor
Professor of English at the University of Cambridge
Laura Salisbury
Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Exeter
And
Mark Nixon
Associate Professor in Modern Literature at the University of Reading and co-director of the Beckett International Foundation
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Last on
LINKS AND FURTHER READING
Steven Connor at the University of Cambridge
Laura Salisbury at the University of Exeter
Mark Nixon at the University of Reading
Samuel Beckett - The British Library
Samuel Beckett Endpage – University of Antwerp
READING LIST:
Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing and other Shorter Prose, 1950-1976 (Faber & Faber, 2010)
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (first published 1938; Faber & Faber, 2009)
George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck (eds.), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 2. 1941–1956 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck (eds.), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 3. 1957–1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck (eds.), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 4. 1966–1989 (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck (eds.), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 1. 1929–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Andrew Gibson, Samuel Beckett (Reaktion Books, 2010)
S. E. Gontarski, A Companion to Samuel Beckett (Blackwell, 2010)
Hugh Kenner, A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett (Syracuse University Press, 1996)
James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (Bloomsbury, 1997)
James Knowlson and John Haynes, Images of Beckett (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Christopher Ricks, Beckett’s Dying Words (Clarendon, 1990)
Laura Salisbury, Samuel Beckett: Laughing Matters, Comic Timing (Edinburgh University Press, 2015)
Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon, Samuel Beckett's Library (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Broadcasts
- Thu 17 Jan 2019 09:00BBC Radio 4
- Thu 17 Jan 2019 21:30BBC Radio 4
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