Beckett and Nature

(Hardback)

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New analyses on the insightful ways in which Becketts work actively engages with contested notions of Nature and the natural, developing a radical version of modernisms main questions and insights.

Beckett and Nature takes its cue from contemporary developments in Beckett scholarship focused on ecocriticism, posthumanism, and the Anthropocene, going beyond them into a questioning of the very concepts of Nature and the natural. It examines one of the most unthought ontological dimensions of literature and life: that symbolic space, deemed natural or part of Nature, appears necessary and undeniable and, therefore, impossible to be deconstructed. In doing so, the authors show that, in fact, this space takes on many shapes, recognizing three natural dimensions criticized by Beckett: bodies, worlds, and literatures.

Featuring a wide range of both Beckett's work and Beckett scholars including Jean-Michel Rabat and Stanley E. Gontarski Beckett and Nature offers contextualized readings of the understandings of nature and the natural throughout his decade-spanning uvre. The volume shows that part of the radicality of Becketts writing is that through a variety of evolving techniques and strategies it questions what appears in our cultures as the most unquestionable and opens up possibilities for thinking not only what is human, literature, and philosophy, but also gender, identity, and any attempt at definitions of ourselves or the world at large.

Author Bio

Charles Clements is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at Tufts University, USA. His research focuses on the metaphysical assumptions of 20th-century Irish and British fiction with a particular emphasis on issues of representation and non-knowledge.

Eleanor Green works at the University of Manchester, UK. They are also Co-Ordinator for the Beyond Radical Network, a queer studies research network in the UK. They have presented at national and international conferences and their reviews and interviews can be found at the Beckett Circle and Review 31.

James Martell is Associate Professor of French at Lyon College, USA. His publications include Beckett and Derrida (forthcoming), Modernism, Self-Creation, and the Maternal: The Mother's Son (2019), Samuel Beckett and the Encounter of Philosophy and Literature (2013; with Arka Chattopadhyay), and Tattooed Bodies: Theorizing Body Inscription Across Disciplines and Cultures (2021; with Erik Larsen). He is the volume editor of Understanding Sade, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2025).