Samuel Beckett's work harbors an inevitable complicity with traditional modes and values. His idealist and even nihilist inclinations, for example, are closely related to the abstracting and systematizing tendencies that have predominated in Western thinking. His drama and fiction, in reproducing these tendencies, also help to reinforce and legitimate them. Beckett's work can thus be said to encourage an attitude of stoic resignation or life-denying withdrawal. Sylvie Debevec Henning's study reveals an important ...
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Samuel Beckett's work harbors an inevitable complicity with traditional modes and values. His idealist and even nihilist inclinations, for example, are closely related to the abstracting and systematizing tendencies that have predominated in Western thinking. His drama and fiction, in reproducing these tendencies, also help to reinforce and legitimate them. Beckett's work can thus be said to encourage an attitude of stoic resignation or life-denying withdrawal. Sylvie Debevec Henning's study reveals an important countertendency. In examining Beckett's art and literary criticism, his novel Murphy, plays Krapp's Last Tape and Endgame, his only film venture, and the late story "The Lost Ones," she shows that through a variety of double-voiced techniques -- irony, parody, and satire -- Beckett also brings a powerful critical light to bear upon our culture's repeated attempts to reduce or eliminate the more problematic aspects of existence and even mocks our desire to do so. His disquieting and occasionally uproarious interweaving of contradictory perspectives -- somber and carnivalized, established and contestory -- suggests that suffering and anguish are fundamental to life, while it affirms their relation to laughter and creative vigor within a richer, if less settled, cultural context. Drawing upon the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and particularly Bakhtin, Henning argues that Beckett's profound critique of Western intellectual tradition does not necessarily entail the loss of all positive values and beliefs. On the contrary, his use of carnivalesque and dialogized modes signals a revitalizing capacity that has not been fully appreciated.
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Add this copy of Beckett's Critical Complicity: Carnival, Contestation, to cart. $22.14, very good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 1988 by University Press of Kentucky.
Add this copy of Beckett's Critical Complicity: Carnival, Contestation, to cart. $39.20, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 1988 by University Press of Kentucky.
Add this copy of Beckett's Critical Complicity: Carnival, Contestation, to cart. $42.00, like new condition, Sold by Between the Covers-Rare Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gloucester City, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 1988 by The University Press of Kentucky.
Add this copy of Beckett's Critical Complicity: Carnival, Contestation, to cart. $47.00, like new condition, Sold by Between the Covers-Rare Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gloucester City, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 1988 by The University Press of Kentucky.
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Fine in Fine jacket. First edition. 228pp. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Advance Review Copy with publisher's slip laid in. Winner of the 1987 Midwest Modern Language Association Book Award.
Add this copy of Beckett's Critical Complicity: Carnival, Contestation, to cart. $52.05, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1988 by University Press of Kentucky.
