Daniela Caselli - Böcker

Beckett's Dantes: Intertextuality in the fiction and criticism is the first study in English on the literary relationship between Beckett and Dante. It is an innovative reading of Samuel Beckett and Dante's works and a critical engagement with contemporary theories of intertextuality. The volume interprets Dante in the original Italian (as it appears in Beckett), translating into English all Italian quotations. It benefits from a multilingual approach based on Beckett's published works in English and French, and on manuscripts (which use English, French, German and Italian).The book is aimed at the scholarly communities interested in literatures in English, literary and critical theory, comparative literature and theory, French literature and theory and Italian studies. Its jargon-free style will also attract third-year or advanced undergraduate students, and postgraduate students, as well as those readers interested in the unusual relationship between one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and the medieval author who stands for the very idea of the Western canon.

Beckett's Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism is the first study in English on the literary relation between Beckett and Dante. It is an innovative reading of Samuel Beckett and Dante's works and a critical engagement with contemporary theories of intertextuality. It is an informative intertextual reading of Beckett's work, detecting previously unknown quotations, allusions to, and parodies of Dante in Beckett's fiction and criticism. The volume interprets Dante in the original Italian (as it appears in Beckett), translating into English all Italian quotations. It benefits from a multilingual approach based on Beckett's published works in English and French, and on manuscripts (which use English, French, German and Italian). Through a close reading of Beckett's fiction and criticism, the book will argue that Dante is both assumed as an external source of literary and cultural authority in Beckett's work, and also participates in Beckett's texts' sceptical undermining of authority. Moreover, the book demonstrates that the many references to various 'Dantes' produce 'Mr Beckett' as the figure of the author responsible for such a remarkably interconnected oeuvre. The book is aimed at the scholarly communities interested in literatures in English, literary and critical theory, comparative literature and theory, French literature and theory and Italian studies. Its jargon-free style will also attract third-year or advanced undergraduate students, and postgraduate students, as well as those readers interested in the unusual relationship between one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and the medieval author who stands for the very idea of the Western canon.

Beckett and nothing invites its readership to understand the complex ways in which the Beckett canon both suggests and resists turning nothing into something by looking at specific, sometimes almost invisible ways in which ‘little nothings’ pervade the Beckett canon.The volume has two main functions: on the one hand, it looks at ‘nothing’ not only as a content but also a set of rhetorical strategies to reconsider afresh classic Beckett problems such as Irishness, silence, value, marginality, politics and the relationships between modernism and postmodernism and absence and presence. On the other, it focuses on ‘nothing’ in order to assess how the Beckett oeuvre can help us rethink contemporary preoccupations with materialism, neurology, sculpture, music and television. The volume is a scholarly intervention in the fields of Beckett studies which offers its chapters as case studies to use in the classroom. It will prove of interest to advanced students and scholars in English, French, Comparative Literature, Drama, Visual Studies, Philosophy, Music, Cinema and TV studies.

Beckett’s reception was characterised in its early stages by a sustained attention to nothing as a philosophical concept. Theodor Adorno, however, was quick to argue that Beckett’s plays resisted – unlike Sartre’s – having their nothing transformed into something. This Beckettian nothing, moreover, is often invested with the aura of the genius, either for eulogical or dismissive purposes. This volume invites its readership to understand the complex ways in which the Beckett canon both suggests and resists turning nothing into something by looking at specific, sometimes almost invisible ways in which ‘little nothings’ pervade the Beckett canon.The volume has two main functions: on the one hand, it looks at ‘nothing’ not only as a content but also a set of rhetorical strategies to reconsider afresh classic Beckett problems such as Irishness, silence, value, marginality, politics and the relationships between modernism and postmodernism and absence and presence. On the other, it focuses on ‘nothing’ in order to assess how the Beckett oeuvre can help us rethink contemporary preoccupations with materialism, neurology, sculpture, music and television. Both advanced students and scholars of Beckett will find the volume of interest. It comprises jargon-free chapters that analyse Beckett’s prose, drama, film, television, manuscripts and marginalia. It will prove of interest to advanced students and scholars in English, French, Comparative Literature, Drama, Visual Studies, Philosophy, Music, Cinema and TV studies.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

In her compelling reexamination of Djuna Barnes's work, Daniela Caselli raises timely questions about Barnes, biography and feminist criticism, identity and authority, and modernist canon formation. Through close readings of Barnes's manuscripts, correspondence, critically acclaimed and little-known texts, Caselli tackles one of the central unacknowledged issues in Barnes: intertextuality. She shows how throughout Barnes's corpus the repetition of texts, by other authors (from Blake to Middleton) and by Barnes herself, forces us to rethink the relationship between authority and gender and the reasons for her marginal place within modernism. All her texts, linked as they are by correspondences and permutations, wage a war against the common sense of the straight mind. Caselli begins by analyzing how literary criticism has shaped our perceptions of Barnes, showing how the various personae assigned to Barnes are challenged when the right questions are posed: Why is Barnes such a famous author when many of her texts remain unread, even by critics? Why has criticism reduced Barnes's work to biographical speculations? How can Barnes's hybrid, eccentric, and unconventional corpus be read as part of literary modernism when it often seems to sever itself from it? How can an oeuvre reject the labels of feminist and lesbian literature, whilst nevertheless holding at its centre the relationships between language, sexuality, and the real? How can Barnes's work help us to rethink the relation between simplicity and difficulty within literary modernism? Caselli concludes by arguing that Barnes's complex and bewildering work is committed to a high modernist notion of art as a supremely difficult undertaking whilst refusing to conform to standards of modernist acceptability.

Insufferable: Beckett, Gender and Sexuality rethinks the role of gender politics in the oeuvre, demonstrates Beckett's historical importance in the development of the 'antisocial thesis' in queer theory, and shows the work's attachment to sexuality as temporarily consolatory but ultimately unbearable. The Beckett oeuvre might seem unpromising material for gender and sexuality studies, but this is exactly what makes it worth considering. This Element brings to Beckett questions that have emerged from gender, queer, and trans theory, engages with the history of feminism and sexuality studies, and develops a theoretical framework able to account for what we have previously overlooked, underplayed, and misinterpreted in Beckett. In the spirit of being 'on the lookout for an elsewhere', it makes a case for a queerly generative de-idealisation of Beckett as an object of critical study.

In her compelling reexamination of Djuna Barnes's work, Daniela Caselli raises timely questions about Barnes, biography and feminist criticism, identity and authority, and modernist canon formation. Through close readings of Barnes's manuscripts, correspondence, critically acclaimed and little-known texts, Caselli tackles one of the central unacknowledged issues in Barnes: intertextuality. She shows how throughout Barnes's corpus the repetition of texts, by other authors (from Blake to Middleton) and by Barnes herself, forces us to rethink the relationship between authority and gender and the reasons for her marginal place within modernism. All her texts, linked as they are by correspondences and permutations, wage a war against the common sense of the straight mind. Caselli begins by analyzing how literary criticism has shaped our perceptions of Barnes, showing how the various personae assigned to Barnes are challenged when the right questions are posed: Why is Barnes such a famous author when many of her texts remain unread, even by critics? Why has criticism reduced Barnes's work to biographical speculations? How can Barnes's hybrid, eccentric, and unconventional corpus be read as part of literary modernism when it often seems to sever itself from it? How can an oeuvre reject the labels of feminist and lesbian literature, whilst nevertheless holding at its centre the relationships between language, sexuality, and the real? How can Barnes's work help us to rethink the relation between simplicity and difficulty within literary modernism? Caselli concludes by arguing that Barnes's complex and bewildering work is committed to a high modernist notion of art as a supremely difficult undertaking whilst refusing to conform to standards of modernist acceptability.

This book examines dramatic dialogue in English-language theatre, tracing verbal invention across four centuries from Shakespeare and Restoration comedy right up to contemporary English and American theatre.Published posthumously, this renowned theatre scholar's book considers English dramatic dialogue as exemplified in the verbal invention of particular plays. That invention is traced through puns, repetitions, adroit clichés, occasional neologisms, malapropisms, sound play and more or less recondite allusions.In eight chapters, Cohn offers close readings of monologue and dialogue in plays by William Shakespeare, William Wycherley, George Etherege, William Congreve, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Caryl Churchill, Sam Shepard, Adrienne Kennedy and Suzan-Lori Parks. It’s a fascinating text, written with Cohn’s characteristic wit, warmth and lucidity, and offers both an authoritative introduction to theatre dialogue and a remarkable final addition to Cohn’s scholarly legacy.