Beckett and Phenomenology

Matthew Feldman is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century History at the University of Northampton, UK. Ulrika Maude is a Senior Lecturer in Beckett Studies and Modernism in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Reading.

• Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Beckettian Phenomenologies? Ulrika Maude (University of Durham) and Matthew Feldman (University of Northampton); PART I: BECKETT AND PHENOMENOLOGY; 1. 'But what was this pursuit of meaning, in this indifference to meaning?': Beckett, Husserl and 'Meaning Creation', Matthew Feldman (University of Northampton); 2. Phenomenologies of the Nothing: Democritus, Heidegger, Beckett, Shane Weller (University of Kent at Canterbury); 3. Beckett and Sartre: The Nauseous Character of All Flesh, Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, University of London) 4. 'Material of a Strictly Peculiar Order': Beckett, Merleau-Ponty and Perception, Ulrika Maude (University of Durham); PART II: BECKETT'S PHENOMENOLOGIES; 5. Between Art-world and Life-world: Beckett's Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Mark Nixon (University of Reading); 6. Murphydurke, or towards a Phenomenology of Immaturity, Jean-Michel Rabate (University of Pennsylvania); 7. Bodily Histories: Beckett and the Phenomenological Approach to the Other, Steven Matthews (Oxford Brookes University); 8. What Remains of Beckett: Evasion and History, Daniel Katz (Universite de Paris VII); 9. Beckett's Ghost Dramas: Monitoring a Phenomenology of Sleep, Paul Sheehan (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia); 10. Living the Unnamable: A Phenomenology of Reading, Paul Stewart (University of Nicosia); 11. The 'Distinct Context of Relevant Knowledge': Beckett's 'Yellow' and the Phenomenology of Annotation, Chris Ackerley (University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand); Index.

"Though phenomenology and its offshoot, existentialism, were very much in the air when Beckett's creative genius first became known in Europe and abroad, to date no study has looked as comprehensively as does Beckett and Phenomenology at the interconnections between his writing and that phrlosophkal perspective, however diverse its manifestations. All the greats are there: From Husserl to Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and beyond. And Beckett's greatness, however diverse its manifestations, is revealed in a very new light. Beckett and Phenomenology is truly a phenomenology of Beckett's world!" - Professor Lois Oppenheim, Past President of The Samuel Beckett Society. "Beckett and Phenomenology offers a cogent and convincing exploration of Beckett's work in the light of phenomenological ideas and will undoubtedly be of interest to Beckett scholars. It is an accomplished study of what must now be viewed as a key aspect of contemporary Beckett studies." -Review of English Studies