Beckett Resitué Dans L'Histolre

A paradox lies at the core of Samuel Beckett's creative enterprise. As arguably the pre-eminent writer of the post-World War II era, a period we loosely call post-modem, his work is equally the culmination of the Romantic agony ; he is at once the emblematic deconstructive author and heir to Kant and Schopenhauer (despite their emphasis on the phenomenal world). In other words, his celebrated innovation and his assault on literary convention are themselves rooted in discemable literary and cultural traditions, as pre- as post-modem, his sensibility reaching back to the classical – that classicism leavened both by late Romanticism and post-humanism. Finally, his celebrated aporia may finally be more rooted in Scholasticist than in post-structuralist thought. One useful starting point for reading Beckett then may be Beckett's own reading, particularly those works he read as he struggled to invent himself as a writer.