Absorption and Theatricality - On Ghost Trio

Samuel Beckett's 1976 Television play Ghost Trio is one of his most beautiful and mysterious works. It is also the play that most clearly demonstrates Beckett's imaginative and aesthetic engagement with the visual arts and the history of painting in particular. Drawing on the work of Stanley Cavell and Michael Fried, On Ghost Trio demonstrates Beckett's exploration of the relationship between theatricality, absorption and objecthood, and shows how his work anticipates the development of video and installation art. In doing so Conor Carville develops a new and highly original reading of Beckett's art, rooted in both archival sources and philosophical aesthetics.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Modernism, Painting, Tragedy; 3. 'Good Evening'; 4. The Fact of Separateness: Beckett and Scepticism; 5. To-be-Seenness: Fried and Film; 6. Resorting to Rectangles; 7. 'He Will Now Think He Hears Her'; 8. Objects of a Special Gaze; 9. The Face of the Father; 10. The Ghost; 11. Conclusion.

Summary

Samuel Beckett's 1976 Television play Ghost Trio is one of his most beautiful and mysterious works. It demonstrates Beckett's exploration of the relationship between theatricality, absorption and objecthood, and shows how his work anticipates the development of video and installation art.

Product details

• Authors: Conor Carville, Conor (University of Reading) Carville, Carville Conor
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2022
• EAN: 9781009001175
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0900117-5
• No. of pages: 75
• Series: Elements in Beckett Studies
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; French, English, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, Literary studies: plays and playwrights