Falsifying Beckett: Essays on Archives, Philosophy & Methodology in Beckett Studies

The dozen essays brought together here, alongside a newly-written introduction, contextualise and exemplify the recent "empirical turn" in Beckett studies. Characterised, above all, by recourse to manuscript materials in constructing revisionist interpretations, this approach has helped to transform the study of Samuel Beckett over the past generation. In addition to focusing upon Beckett's early immersion in philosophy and psychology, other chapters similarly analyse his later collaboration with the BBC through the lens of literary history. The book thus offers new readings of Beckett by returning to his archive of notebooks, letters, and drafts. In reassessing key aspects of his development as one of the 20th century's leading artists, this collection is of interest to all students of Beckett's writing as well as "historicist" scholars and critics of modernism more generally.