Samuel Beckett

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989), who lived in Paris and wrote his plays and novels in French, not because his French was better than his English, but because it was worse. In works such as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Molloy and Malone Dies, he wanted to show the limitations of language, what words could not do, together with the absurdity and humour of the human condition. In part he was reacting to the verbal omnipotence of James Joyce, with whom he’d worked in Paris, and in part to his experience in the French Resistance during World War 2, when he used code, writing not to reveal meaning but to conceal it.

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Guests

• Steven Connor 3 episodes
  Professor of English at the University of Cambridge
• Laura Salisbury No other episodes
  Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Exeter
• Mark Nixon No other episodes
  Associate Professor in Modern Literature at the University of Reading and co-director of the Beckett International Foundation

Reading list

• Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing and other Shorter Prose, 1950-1976
  Faber & Faber, 2010
• Samuel Beckett, Murphy
  first published 1938; Faber & Faber, 2009
• The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 2. 1941-1956
  George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 3. 1957-1965
  George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
• The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 4. 1966-1989
  George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
• The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 1. 1929-1940
  Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
• Andrew Gibson, Samuel Beckett
  Reaktion Books, 2010
• S. E. Gontarski, A Companion to Samuel Beckett
  Blackwell, 2010
• Hugh Kenner, A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett
  Syracuse University Press, 1996
• James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
  Bloomsbury, 1997
• James Knowlson and John Haynes, Images of Beckett
  Cambridge University Press, 2003
• Christopher Ricks, Beckett's Dying Words
  Clarendon, 1990
• Laura Salisbury, Samuel Beckett: Laughing Matters, Comic Timing
  Edinburgh University Press, 2015
• Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon, Samuel Beckett's Library
  Cambridge University Press, 2013

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Programme ID: m00021q7

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00021q7

Auto-category: 842 (French drama)