Beckett and Nothing

Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Beckett and nothing invites its readership to understand the complex ways in which the Beckett canon both suggests and resists turning nothing into something by looking at specific, sometimes almost invisible ways in which ‘little nothings’ pervade the Beckett canon. The volume has two main functions: on the one hand, it looks at ‘nothing’ not only as a content but also a set of rhetorical strategies to reconsider afresh classic Beckett problems such as Irishness, silence, value, marginality, politics and the relationships between modernism and postmodernism and absence and presence. On the other, it focuses on ‘nothing’ in order to assess how the Beckett oeuvre can help us rethink contemporary preoccupations with materialism, neurology, sculpture, music and television. The volume is a scholarly intervention in the fields of Beckett studies which offers its chapters as case studies to use in the classroom. It will prove of interest to advanced students and scholars in English, French, Comparative Literature, Drama, Visual Studies, Philosophy, Music, Cinema and TV studies.