Ranjan Ghosh teaches in the Department of English at the University of North Bengal. He is widely published in journals like The Oxford LiteraryReview, History and Theory, parallax, Rethinking History, South Asia, SubStance, symploke, The Comparatist and others. Among his recent books include Lover’sQuarrel with the Past: Romance, Representation, Reading (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), Edward Said, the Literary, Social and the PoliticalWorld (New York: Routledge, 2009), Making Sense of the Secular (New York: Routledge, 2012), Presence: Philosophy, History and Cultural Theory for the 21st Century (Cornell University Press, 2013, with Ethan Kleinberg).

• Introduction: Dialogic-GodoticRanjan Ghosh The Politics of Identification in Waiting for GodotGraley Herren “What have I said?” Vladimir’s Tragic RecognitionMark S. Byron Alone and Together: The Psychic Structure of the Couple in Waiting for GodotMary Catanzaro Beckett contra Aristotle: A Choral Reading of Waiting for GodotTom Cousineau Waiting upon each other: work and play in waiting for GodotRanjan Ghosh Rien à faire: The Para-Messianics of Delay in GodotStephen Barker Waiting For Nothing: Commitment, Resistance, and Godot’s Underground AncestryPaul Sheehan Scrutinizing the feminine in Waiting for Godot: Vladimir and Estragon await their couples counsellorArt Horowitz Beckett’s Lucky Chance: Speculation in Waiting for GodotEyal Amiran Samuel Beckett’s Playland: The Profane and Infantile Politics of Waiting for GodotMaria Margaroni ‘Who is Godot?’ Beckett and AllegoryShane Weller Culture, Politics and Human Rights in Waiting for GodotWanda Balzano Index About the Authors

Ghosh has assembled 13 outstanding essays that review Beckett's most popular drama. The volume's contributors engage the play in meaningful contexts that have important implications for performance, production, and scholarship. Standout essays explore the political contexts of site-specific productions in Sarajevo and post-Katrina New Orleans; the affinities and contrasts of Godot to classical Greek tragedy; Beckett and allegory; and the psychodynamics of friendship and coupling. Beckett's attempt to redefine theater in postwar Europe is also explored, as are the ways in which Beckett's experiences in the French resistance suffuse this play and his other postwar writing. The essays contemplate the drama within a range of political and philosophical contexts, including issues of torture and human rights, Marxist and psychoanalytic thought, philosophical reflections on the eternal return, Aristotle's Poetics, poststructuralism, and Hindu philosophy. Taken together they shed contemporary light on this drama in ways that are suggestive for actors, directors, and scholars, and provide valuable insights into the criticism and practices of this most popular of Beckett's plays. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.