Making of Samuel Beckett's Not I / Pas Moi That Time / Cette Fois and Footfalls / Pas

<p>This volume of the BDMP series charts the genesis of three iconic Beckett plays: <i>Not I</i> (1973) <i>That Time</i> (1976) and <i>Footfalls </i>(1976) all translated into French by their author. Including analyses of abandoned archival precursors - the '<i>Kilcool</i>' drafts (1963) and the '<i>Petit Odéon' </i>Fragments (1967-1968) - the book covers a crucial period in Beckett's playwriting career during which his long-held ambition to stage a mouth babbling in the dark became a catalyst for some of his most innovative work. This volume provides a comprehensive guide to the history of the three plays tracking their development from compositional manuscripts through to publication and performance. <p/>The book contends that these plays should be seen as stagings of the subject-object breakdown explored in Beckett's early writing. Drawing on the notes he took on psychology and psychoanalysis in 1934-1935 it examines the many psychological and psychoanalytic concepts that are used in the author's later stagings of the mind. The plays are analysed through the lens of enactive cognition: not as representations of particular psychological conditions but as pieces which encourage active interpretation on the part of their audiences. By staging minds in states of breakdown that resist diagnosis <i> Not I</i> /<i> Pas moi</i> <i>That Time</i> / <i>Cette fois</i> and <i>Footfalls </i>/ <i>Pas enact</i> the subject-object breakdown that is such a key part of Beckett's aesthetics.</p>