Beckett and Nothing—Trying to Understand Beckett

Beckett's reception was characterized in its early stages by a sustained attention to nothing as a philosophical concept. Theodor Adorno, however, was quick to argue that Beckett's plays resisted – unlike Sartre's – having their nothing transformed into something. This Beckettian nothing, moreover, is often invested with the aura of the genius, either for eulogical or dismissive purposes. This volume invites its readership to understand the complex ways in which the Beckett canon both suggests and resists turning nothing into something by looking at specific, sometimes almost invisible ways in which "little nothings" pervade the Beckett canon. The volume has two main functions: on the one hand, it looks at "nothing" not only as a content but also a set of rhetorical strategies, to reconsider afresh classic Beckett problems, such as Irishness, silence, value, marginality, politics, and the relationships between modernism and postmodernism and absence and presence; on the other, it focuses on "nothing" in order to assess how the Beckett oeuvre can help us rethink contemporary preoccupations with materialism, neurology, sculpture, music, and television. Both advanced students and scholars of Beckett will find the volume of interest. It comprises jargon-free chapters that analyze Beckett's prose, drama, film, television, manuscripts, and marginalia. It will prove of interest to advanced students and scholars in English, French, and Comparative Literature, Drama, Visual Studies, Philosophy, Music, Cinema, and TV studies.

Daniela Caselli is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture in the School of Arts, Histories, and Cultures at the University of Manchester.

Terry Eagleton is Professor at the Universities of Lancaster.
Jonathan Bignell is Professor of Television and Film at the University of Reading.