Samuel Becketts Italian Modernisms: Tradition, Texts, Performance [Hardcover]

In the wake of both Joycean and Dantean celebrations, this volume aims to investigate the fecund influence of Italian culture on Samuel Becketts work, with a specific focus on the Twentieth Century.

In the wake of both Joycean and Dantean celebrations, this volume aims to investigate the fecund influence of Italian culture on Samuel Becketts work, with a specific focus on the twentieth century.

Located at the intersection of historical avant-garde movements and a renewed interest in tradition, Italian modernism reimagined Italy and its culture, projecting it beyond the shadow of fascism. Following in Joyces footsteps, Samuel Beckett soon became an attentive reader of Italian modernist authors. These had a profound effect on his early work, shaping his artistic identity. The influence of his early readings found its way also into Becketts postwar writing and, most poignantly, in his theatre. The contributions in this collection rekindle the debate around Beckett as modernist author through the lenses of Italian culture.

This study will be of particular interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies, Italian studies, English studies, and comparative literature.

Part 1 Beckett and Italian Interwar Culture  1. Becketts Dystopian Trilogy, Part I: Luckys Cerebral Physiology and the Irrelevance of Godot  2. Leopardi in Becketts Late Modernist Romanticism  3. Mirror Acts: Dramatic Form in Pirandellos Six Characters in Search of an Author and Becketts Waiting for Godot  Part 2 Beckett, Modernism and Tradition: Absurdism and Purgatorial Shadows  4. Analogymongering: Dante and Vico in Beckett  5. Denti Alligator or Airtight Alligator: Reading Dante with Joyce and Beckett  6. Beckett and Ariosto: Nominalist Irony, l#Â