Samuel Beckett and the Primacy of LoveThis study is about the central place of the emotional world in Beckett's writing. Stating that Beckett is "primarily about love", John Keller makes a radical re-assessment of his influence and immense popularity. The book examines numerous Beckettian texts, arguing that they embody a struggle to remain in contact with a primal sense of internal goodness, one founded on early experience with the mother. Writing itself becomes an internal dialogue, in which the reader is engaged, between a “narrative-self” and a mother. |
Contents
Preliminaries and Proust | 9 |
Murphys misrecognition of love | 49 |
in Becketts short fiction | 172 |
Epilogue217 | 217 |
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Common terms and phrases
abandonment absence ambivalence annihilation anxiety Arsene aspects attack attempt authentic autistic Beckett Beckettian becomes begins bye bye bye calm Celia central child condensed connection containment core create cylinder dead death death instinct depression Depressive Position despair disconnection dominant early experience echoes emerging-self emotional Endon enduring engagement entrapment Estragon experienced failure fantasy fear feeling felt fiction final Footfalls fragmented function Guntrip hope hostile identification imagery imagos infant infantile infantile-self inner internal experience internal objects internal world introjection isolation Knott living loneliness loss Lucky Lucky's manifests mirroring mother Murphy Murphy's narrative-self narrator narrator's nurturing oeuvre Paranoid Schizoid Position passage patient person play possibility Pozzo presence primal primary object projective identification protect Proust psychic psychoanalytical rage reflects regressed relationship reminiscent Rockaby rupture sadistic Samuel Beckett sense separation space story struggle suggests symbolic tramps vignette Vladimir voice Waiting for Godot Watt Watt's Winnicott withdrawal words