Author Description

From the outstanding contributions to the Second International Samuel Beckett Conference, held in The Hague in April 1992, Lois Oppenheim and Marius Buning, the co-organizers of that event, have culled nineteen expanded essays, arranged along thematic lines, which testify to the diversity of Beckett studies in the 1990s. The collection is divided into two major sections. Part One is devoted to considerations of gender and genre - subjects of considerable interest to Beckett scholars at the present time, since they are intimately linked by the interplay, characteristic of Beckett's work, between boundary and its undoing. In Part Two of the book, contributors look at textuality and theatricality as both dichotomous and interdependent components of Beckett's writing. Cogent arguments are offered for the development of new habits of reading and new strategies for understanding that acknowledge difference while not resorting to the objectivation of the Other in differentiation, and for coming to terms with the meaning of directorial fidelity and role, in particular of the Beckett director in relation to the psychic sensibility of the performer. Together, the essays in this collection reflect a significant geographic diversity of Beckett scholars - contributors come from eight countries in Europe, North America, and Asia - as well as the breadth of Beckett's appeal to, and the linguistic and semiotic difficulties imposed upon Beckett readers and spectators of differing cultural backgrounds.