S. E. Gontarski

The Nobel Prize winning author Samuel Beckett is a literary treasure, and this work represents the only comprehensive reference to the concepts, characters, and biographical details mentioned by, or related to, Beckett. Painstakingly and lovingly compiled by acclaimed Beckett scholars C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski, it is alphabetical, cross-referenced, and laid out in a very user-friendly format. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett provides an organized trove of information for students and scholars alike, and is a must for any serious reader of Beckett. As most Beckettians know, "reading [him] for the first time is an experience like no other in modern literature." (Paul Auster)

Beckett’s Co-authors takes a fresh look at Samuel Beckett and the business of authorship, especially his involvement in the complicated machinery of commercial theatre. Focusing particularly on Beckett's first professionally produced play, Waiting for Godot, and its premieres in the US, UK and the Republic of Ireland, this book examines extra-authorial interventions into the creative process and how such interventions challenges the autonomy of the author and his artwork. Calling the result of these early collaborations ‘co-authorship’, S. E. Gontarski delves into the hybrid genre of theatre where collective aesthetics tends to override and thus supersede individual creation, using the methodology of archival archaeology to uncover previously unpublished letters and unknown archival documents relating to three national premieres. These case studies nevertheless have implications far beyond a single theatrical work, placing a spotlight on the nature of authorship and the process of realising dramatic texts in a monetised culture.

The Anthem Beckett Studies Reader, edited by S. E. Gontarski, is an indispensable guide to the restless, rigorously inventive field of Beckett studies—one that mirrors Samuel Beckett’s own refusal of settled meanings and stable forms.

Beckett's Co-authors takes a fresh look at Samuel Beckett and the business of authorship, especially his involvement in the complicated machinery of commercial theatre. Focusing particularly on Beckett's first professionally produced play, Waiting for Godot, and its premieres in the US, UK and the Republic of Ireland, this book examines extra-authorial interventions into the creative process and how such interventions challenges the autonomy of the author and his artwork. Calling the result of these early collaborations 'co-authorship', S. E. Gontarski delves into the hybrid genre of theatre where collective aesthetics tends to override and thus supersede individual creation, using the methodology of archival archaeology to uncover previously unpublished letters and unknown archival documents relating to three national premieres. These case studies nevertheless have implications far beyond a single theatrical work, placing a spotlight on the nature of authorship and the process of realising dramatic texts in a monetised culture.

This Element focuses on the machinery of commercial theatre, on extra-authorial interventions into the creative process and on the people and institutional forces that foster them. Such a process challenges the autonomy of the artwork and authorial integrity. The primary focus of this Element is then on the hybrid genre of theatre where collective esthetics tends to override and so to supersede individual creation. The essay pays special attention to Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play, Waiting for Godot, primarily its English language premieres in the US, UK, and the Republic of Ireland. Its implications, however, reach far beyond the genetic and production histories of a single theatrical work to deal with the nature of authorship in a monetized culture, the process of realizing dramatic texts in such a culture, and Samuel Beckett's engagement with such machinery of art.

This Element focuses on the machinery of commercial theatre, on extra-authorial interventions into the creative process and on the people and institutional forces that foster them. Such a process challenges the autonomy of the artwork and authorial integrity. The primary focus of this Element is then on the hybrid genre of theatre where collective esthetics tends to override and so to supersede individual creation. The essay pays special attention to Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play, Waiting for Godot, primarily its English language premieres in the US, UK, and the Republic of Ireland. Its implications, however, reach far beyond the genetic and production histories of a single theatrical work to deal with the nature of authorship in a monetized culture, the process of realizing dramatic texts in such a culture, and Samuel Beckett's engagement with such machinery of art.

Tennessee Williams, T-shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater reappraises the received wisdom that Williams’s work fell into decline in the late 1960 as the Naturalism he was associated with, not always through his own choice, was replaced by European theatrical experimentalism and as culture saw a lifting of sexual restrictions. It suggests, instead, that Williams was always experimental, always more Chekhov than Ibsen, a lyrical playwright inflected with the poetry of Harte Crane, and that his late plays are as central to Williams’s reshaping of American theater as those works of the immediate post–World War II era that brought him fame and fortune. Its general aim, then, is to engage the perception that “Tennessee Williams is the greatest unknown playwright America has produced” (David Savran, City University of New York). In many respects the work of Tennessee Williams, after a protracted period of neglect, is primed for reappraisal , reinterpretations and, subsequently, re-stagings. This work is part of that process, academically at very least, but performatively as well as academic reinterest often regenerates theatrical reinterest.

An original philosophical approach to one of the 20th century's most important literary figuresCreative Involution: Bergson, Beckett Deleuze focuses on a force, on a philosophical trajectory that not only had a profound impact on critical thought of the 20th and now 21st centuries, but on cosmopolitan, contemporary culture more broadly and on artistic experiment and expression in particular. It explores how the work of Samuel Beckett intersects with such preoccupations of time as a "double headed monster," of memory and multiplicity, of being and becoming that continue in an involutionary turn through the work of Gilles Deleuze. Key Features:Deploys new critical approaches (e.g., a return to Bergson and Bergsonism) Addresses underexplored works in the Beckett canon Presents new critiques of representation and Beckett's relationship to philosophy Attentive to critical thinking around affect theory and/in literature. S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University where he edited the Journal of Beckett Studies from 1992-2008. He currently serves as Co-Editor for the Journal. Among his recent books are: The Beckett Critical Reader: Archives, Theories, and Translations (2012) and The Edinburgh Companion to Samuel Beckett and the Arts (2014), both from Edinburgh University Press, and a second edition of On Beckett: Essays and Criticism from Anthem Press (2012).

Revisioning Beckett reassesses Beckett’s career and literary output, particularly his engagement with what might be called decadent modernism. Gontarski approaches Beckett from multiple viewpoints: from his running afoul of the Irish Censorship of Publications Acts in the 1930s through the 1950s, his preoccupations to “find literature in the pornography, or beneath the pornography,” his battles with the Lord Chamberlain in the mid-1950s over London stagings of his first two plays, and his close professional and personal associations with publishers who celebrated the work of the demimonde. Much of that term encompasses an opening to the fullness of human experience denied in previous centuries, and much of that has been sexual or decadent. As Gontarski shows, the aesthetics that emerges from such early career encounters and associations continues to inform Beckett’s work and develops into experimental modes that upend literary models and middle-class values, an aesthetics that, furthermore, has inspired any number of visual artists to re-vision Beckett.

Revisioning Beckett reassesses Beckett’s career and literary output, particularly his engagement with what might be called decadent modernism. Gontarski approaches Beckett from multiple viewpoints: from his running afoul of the Irish Censorship of Publications Acts in the 1930s through the 1950s, his preoccupations to “find literature in the pornography, or beneath the pornography,” his battles with the Lord Chamberlain in the mid-1950s over London stagings of his first two plays, and his close professional and personal associations with publishers who celebrated the work of the demimonde. Much of that term encompasses an opening to the fullness of human experience denied in previous centuries, and much of that has been sexual or decadent. As Gontarski shows, the aesthetics that emerges from such early career encounters and associations continues to inform Beckett’s work and develops into experimental modes that upend literary models and middle-class values, an aesthetics that, furthermore, has inspired any number of visual artists to re-vision Beckett.

Collects Stan Gontarski's finest essays on the work of Samuel Beckett over a forty-year periodRepresenting a profound engagement with the work of Samuel Beckett, this volume gathers the very best of Stan Gontarski's Beckett criticism on practical, theoretical and critical levels. Such a range suggests a multiplicity of approaches to a body of work itself multiple, produced by an artist who underwent any number of transformations and reinventions over his long writing career. Many of the essays collected here explore Beckett's debt to his age, Beckett very much a product of a culture in transition, which change he would help foster. But much of Beckett's creative struggle was to find a new way, his own way. Most of the essays that comprise this volume detail that struggle, toward a way we now call Beckettian. Key FeaturesIncludes 24 original essays divided into thematic sections: modernism, theory, editing, introducing, and performing and covers Beckett's drama, staging, fiction, poetry and proseUnique collection of Beckett scholarship by a leading Beckett critic and theatre director brought together for the first timeNew introductory essay reflecting on the development of Beckett scholarship

Collects Stan Gontarski's finest essays on the work of Samuel Beckett over a forty-year periodRepresenting a profound engagement with the work of Samuel Beckett, this volume gathers the very best of Stan Gontarski's Beckett criticism on practical, theoretical and critical levels. Such a range suggests a multiplicity of approaches to a body of work itself multiple, produced by an artist who underwent any number of transformations and reinventions over his long writing career. Many of the essays collected here explore Beckett's debt to his age, Beckett very much a product of a culture in transition, which change he would help foster. But much of Beckett's creative struggle was to find a new way, his own way. Most of the essays that comprise this volume detail that struggle, toward a way we now call Beckettian. Key FeaturesIncludes 24 original essays divided into thematic sections: modernism, theory, editing, introducing, and performing and covers Beckett's drama, staging, fiction, poetry and proseUnique collection of Beckett scholarship by a leading Beckett critic and theatre director brought together for the first timeNew introductory essay reflecting on the development of Beckett scholarship

The book focuses on a philosophical trajectory that not only had a profound impact on critical thought of the 20th and now 21th centuries, but on cosmopolitan, contemporary culture more broadly and on artistic experiment and expression in particular. It explores how the work of Samuel Beckett intersects with such preoccupations of time as a 'double headed monster', of memory and multiplicity, of being and becoming that continue in an involutionary turn through the work of Gilles Deleuze.

A commentary on Pessoa's work exploring some of the cultural, political and personal implications of the artistic impersonation that made him a figure of modern literature. The book demonstrates the scope of Pessoa's writing and traces the ways in which his four main ""authors"" are related.

This study examines the later plays of Luigi Pirandello - those he wrote for his actress and muse Marta Abba - in light of the publication of their correspondence. It traces his entire creative process, revealing how his perception of women shaped his philosophy of art and life.

Examines specifically Beckett's almost obsessive concern with psychological sources, themes, and his use of Freudian and Jungian narrative structures.

Attempting to provide a more precise meaning to the term ""modernism"", this text combines psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts in rereading the history of modernity. The author focuses throughout on a single theme - the ghostly nature of modernity.