Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yeats, and Jack Yeats

Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yeats, and Jack Yeats

Author: Gordon S. Armstrong

Publisher: Bucknell University Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780838751411

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In contrast to the many critics who consider W. B. Yeats a dominant influence on Beckett's drama, this study demonstrates that the two are almost diametrically opposed in their theater and that the real bridge to Beckett's art is to be found in the narrative and pictorial creations of the younger Yeats brother, Jack.


The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946

The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946

Author: Lois Gordon

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780300074956

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Samuel Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot was one of the most influential works for the post-World War II generation, has long been identified with the debilitated and impotent characters he created. In this provocative book, Lois Gordon offers a new perspective on Beckett, challenging the prevalent image of him as reclusive, self-absorbed, and disturbed. Gordon investigates the first forty years of Beckett's life and finds that he was, on the contrary, a kind and generous man who responded sensitively and even heroically to the world around him. Gordon describes the various places and events that affected Beckett during this formative period: war-torn Dublin during the Easter Uprising and World War I, where he spent his childhood and student days; Belfast and Paris in the 1920s and London during the Depression, where he lived and worked; Germany in 1937, where he traveled and witnessed Hitler's brutal domestic policies; prewar and occupied France, where he was active in the Resistance (for which he was later decorated); and the war-ravaged town of Saint-L� in Normandy, which he helped to restore following the liberation. Gordon also portrays the individuals who were important to Beckett, including Jack B. Yeats, Alfred P�ron, Thomas McGreevy, and, most significantly, James Joyce, who was a model for Beckett personally, artistically, and politically. Gordon argues convincingly that Beckett was very much aware of the political and cultural turmoil of this period and that the enormously creative works he wrote after World War II can, in fact, be viewed as a product of and testament to those tumultuous times.


The Yeats Circle, Verbal and Visual Relations in Ireland, 1880-1939

The Yeats Circle, Verbal and Visual Relations in Ireland, 1880-1939

Author: Karen E. Brown

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780754666448

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Focusing on W.B. Yeats's ideal of mutual support between the arts and on the cultural production of the Yeats circle members, Karen Brown explores the artistic relationships and outcome of Yeats's vision in five case studies. In so doing, the author makes use of primary materials and fresh archival evidence, and delves into a variety of media, including embroidery, print, illustration, theatre, costume design, poetry, and painting.


"The Yeats Circle, Verbal and Visual Relations in Ireland, 1880?939 "

Author: KarenE. Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1351539329

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Focusing on W.B. Yeats's ideal of mutual support between the arts, Karen Brown sheds new light on how collaborations and differences between members of the Yeats family circle contributed to the metamorphosis of the Irish Cultural Revival into Irish Modernism. Making use of primary materials and fresh archival evidence, Brown delves into a variety of media including embroidery, print, illustration, theatre, costume design, poetry, and painting. Tracing the artistic relationships and outcome of W.B. Yeats's vision through five case studies, Brown explores the poet's early engagement with artistic tradition, contributions to the Dun Emer and Cuala Industries, collaboration between W.B. Yeats and Norah McGuinness, analysis of Thomas MacGreevy's pictorial poetry, and a study of literary influence and debt between Jack Yeats and Samuel Beckett. Having undertaken extensive archival research relating to word and image studies, Brown considers her findings in historical context, with particular emphasis on questions of art and gender and art and national identity. Interdisciplinary, this volume is one of the first full-length studies of the fraternit?es arts surrounding W.B. Yeats. It represents an important contribution to word and image studies and to debates surrounding Irish Cultural Revival and the formation of Irish Modernism.


Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies

Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies

Author: L. Oppenheim

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-04-30

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0230504620

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Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies explores the evolution of critical approaches to Beckett's writing. It will appeal to graduate students (and advance undergraduates) as well as scholars, for it offers both an overview of Beckett studies and investigates current debates within the interdisciplinary critical arena. Each of the contributors is an eminent Beckett specialist who has published widely in the field. The volume contains an introduction, twelve essays and a guide for further reading.


Surreal Beckett

Surreal Beckett

Author: Alan Warren Friedman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1351592491

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Surreal Beckett situates Beckett‘s writings within the context of James Joyce and Surrealism, distinguishing ways in which Beckett forged his own unique path, sometimes in accord with, sometimes at odds with, these two powerful predecessors. Beckett was so deeply enmeshed in Joyce’s circle during his early Paris days (1928 - late 1930s) that James Knowlson dubbed them his "Joyce years." But Surrealism and Surrealists rivaled Joyce for Beckett’s early and continuing attention, if not affection, so that Raymond Federman called 1929-45 Beckett’s "surrealist period." Considering both claims, this volume delves deeper into each argument by obscuring the boundaries between theses differentiating studies. These received wisdoms largely maintain that Beckett’s Joycean connection and influence developed a negative impact in his early works, and that Beckett only found his voice when he broke the connection after Joyce’s death. Beckett came to accept his own inner darkness as his subject matter, writing in French and using a first-person narrative voice in his fiction and competing personal voices in his plays. Critics have mainly viewed Beckett’s Surrealist connections as roughly co-terminus with Joycean ones, and ultimately of little enduring consequence. Surreal Beckett argues that both early influences went much deeper for Beckett as he made his own unique way forward, transforming them, particularly Surrealist ones, into resources that he drew upon his entire career. Ultimately, Beckett endowed his characters with resources sufficient to transcend limitations their surreal circumstances imposed upon them.


Unlocking the Poetry of W. B. Yeats

Unlocking the Poetry of W. B. Yeats

Author: Daniel Tompsett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0429885032

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Unlocking the Poetry of W.B. Yeats undertakes a thorough re-reading of Yeats' oeuvre as an extended meditation on the image and theme of the heart as it is evident within the poetry. It places the heart at the centre of a complex web of Yeatsian preoccupations and associations—from the biographical, to the poetic and philosophical, to the mythological and mystical. In particular, the book seeks to unlock Yeats’ mystifying aesthetic vision via his understanding of the ancient Egyptian "Weighing of the Heart" ceremony. The work provides a chronological narrative arc that looks to use the theme of the heart as it recurs in the poetry in order to circumvent and overcome more established frameworks. Its purpose is to offer refreshing ways of conceptualizing and building alternatives to more deeply entrenched, but not entirely satisfactory arguments that have been offered since Yeats' death in 1939, while demonstrating the centrality of the occult to Yeats' art.


The Wrong Country

The Wrong Country

Author: Gerald Dawe

Publisher: Merrion Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1788550307

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This engaging, personal chronicle by Irish poet Gerald Dawe explores the lives and times of leading Irish writers, including W.B. Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett and Stewart Parker, alongside lesser-known names from the earlier decades of the twentieth century, such as Ethna Carberry, Alice Milligan, Joseph Campbell and George Reavey. It also portrays the changing cultural backgrounds of the author’s contemporaries, such as Derek Mahon, Eavan Boland, Eileán Ní Chuilleanáin, Colm Tóibín, Leontia Flynn and Sinéad Morrissey. Gerald Dawe presents an accessible view of modern Irish literature, filtered perceptively through his own distinctive lens, and raises important questions about cultural belonging, the commercialisation of contemporary writing, and the influence of Irish literary culture in a digital age. In this lyrical exploration of national identity, The Wrong Country repositions our understanding of modern Irish writing in a wider context for today’s readers.


Reading Godot

Reading Godot

Author: Lois Gordon

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0300132026

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divdivWaiting for Godot has been acclaimed as the greatest play of the twentieth century. It is also the most elusive: two lifelong friends sing, dance, laugh, weep, and question their fate on a road that descends from and goes nowhere. Throughout, they repeat their intention “Let’s go,” but this is inevitably followed by the direction “(They do not move.).” This is Beckett’s poetic construct of the human condition. Lois Gordon, author of The World of Samuel Beckett, has written a fascinating and illuminating introduction to Beckett’s great work for general readers, students, and specialists. Critically sophisticated and historically informed, it approaches the play scene by scene, exploring the text linguistically, philosophically, critically, and biographically. Gordon argues that the play portrays more than the rational mind’s search for self and worldly definition. It also dramatizes Beckett’s insights into human nature, into the emotional life that frequently invades rationality and liberates, victimizes, or paralyzes the individual. Gordon shows that Beckett portrays humanity in conflict with mysterious forces both within and outside the self, that he is an artist of the psychic distress born of relativism. /DIV/DIV


The Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett

The Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett

Author: Charles A. Carpenter

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2011-10-13

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 1441159746

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A selectively comprehensive bibliography of the vast literature about Samuel Beckett's dramatic works, arranged for the efficient and convenient use of scholars on all levels.