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Beckett and Stein

Beckett and Stein

Beckett and Stein

Georgina Nugent, Universität Wien, Austria
May 2023
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
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9781108996747
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    What motivated Beckett, in 1937, to distance himself from the 'most recent work' of his mentor James Joyce, and instead praise the writings of Gertrude Stein as better reflecting his 'very desirable literature of the non-word'? This Element conducts the first extended comparative study of Stein's role in the development of Beckett's aesthetics. In doing so it redresses the major critical lacuna that is Stein's role and influence on Beckett's nascent bilingual aesthetics of the late 1930s. It argues for Stein's influence on the aesthetics of language Beckett developed throughout the 1930s, and on the overall evolution of his bilingual English writings, arguing that Stein's writing was itself inherently bilingual. It forwards the technique of renarration – a form of repetition identifiable in the work of both authors – as a deliberate narrative strategy adopted by both authors to actualise the desired semantic tearing concordant with their aesthetic praxes in English.

    Reviews & endorsements

    ‘Nugent's book is a meticulous and exhaustive contribution to the relationship between the two writers and allows us to reorder relational schemes within the modernist scene. On the other hand, it carries out a textual analysis that supports the hypotheses deployed throughout the chapters, by comparing both writers while taking into account their nuances and particularities, in a documented and precise critical formulation.’ Manuel Díaz, Beckettiana

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    Product details

    May 2023
    Adobe eBook Reader
    9781108996747
    0 pages
    This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Introduction: 'grammar is in our power' (Stein, 1975, 73)
    • 2. Grammar bound: writings on language
    • 3. Renarration in the making of Americans and watt
    • 4. Getting mixed: Lexical renarrations
    • 5. Lexical renarrations and the goodbye to standard English: Stein's role in the development of Beckett's bilingual English praxis
    • 6. 'Waste no more time trying to get it right': Beckett and Stein's 'fidelity to failure' (Beckett, 2009d, 42
    • 2001, 145)
    • 7. Conclusion: 'say it simply. [...] say it simplier' (Stein, 1975, 147)
    • References.
      Author
    • Georgina Nugent , Universität Wien, Austria