On Beckett, On!

This collection of essays was born from a wish to show to a wider audience how exciting and productive Samuel Beckett scholarship has become, at a time when there are more essays and books written about Beckett than about any key modernist authors like Joyce and Woolf. This volume contains numerous essays on Beckett that the Journal of Modern Literature has published in the last decade. Their enduring quality proves that Beckett’s oeuvre has maintained its appeal today because it attracts original scholars who are also interested in issues like philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethics, contemporary history, and literary theory.

Jean-Michel Rabaté, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania, co-ditor of the Journal of Modern Literature, co-founder and senior curator of Slought Foundation is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Author or editor of more than forty books on modernism, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary theory. Recent monographs include Rust (2018), Kafka L.O.L. (2018), Rire au Soleil (2019), Beckett and Sade (2020), Rires Prodigues: Rire et jouissance chez Marx, Freud et Kafka (2021), James Joyce, Hérétique et Prodigue (2022), and Lacan l’irritant (2023).