Shakespeare and Beckett

"The danger is in the neatness of identifications", Samuel Beckett famously stated, and, at first glance, no two authors could be further distant from one another than William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. This book addresses the vast intertextual network between the works of both writers and explores the resonant correspondences between them. It analyses where and how these resonances manifest themselves in their aesthetics, theatre, language and form. It traces convergences and inversions across both ¶uvres that resound beyond their conditions of production and possibility. Uncovering hitherto unexplored relations between the texts of an early modern and a late modern author, this study seeks to offer fresh readings of single passages and entire works, but it will also describe productive tensions and creative incongruences between them"--

List of contents

1. Shakespeare and Beckett on the Edges; 2. Molecular Shakespeare - Beckett reading Shakespeare through Joyce; 3. 'Some remains': Beckettian and Shakespearean Echoes; 4. Purgatory and Pause -Shakespeare, Dante and the Lobster; 5. '[It is]winter/Without journey' - Still Lifes in Beckett and Shakespeare; 6. Endgames; 7. Theatres of Sleep.

About the author

Claudia Olk is Professor of English at Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich and Director of the Munich Shakespeare Library. Her monographs include Travel and Narration (1999) and Virginia Woolf and the Aesthetics of Vision (2014). Her edition of one of Virginia Woolf's unpublished manuscripts appeared in 2013. She is the president of the German Shakespeare Association.

Summary

This book is the first monograph to study the rich correspondences between the works of William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. It addresses an academic readership in literature and theatre studies, revealing hitherto undiscovered links between major works of both authors, including in music and in the visual arts.

Foreword

This unique study is the first monograph on the manifold intertextual relations and poetic echoes between Shakespeare and Beckett.

Product details

• Authors: Claudia Olk, Claudia (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munch Olk, Olk Claudia
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.01.2023
• EAN: 9781316514030
• ISBN: 978-1-316-51403-0
• No. of pages: 300
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, Theatre Studies, Literary studies: general, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, Shakespeare Studies & Criticism, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Relating to Shakespeare / Shakespearean