Samuel Beckett and the Politics of Aftermath

<em>Samuel Beckett and the Politics of Aftermath</em> explores Beckett's literary responses to the political maelstroms of his formative and middle years: the Irish civil war and the crisis of commitment in 1930s Europe the rise of fascism and the atrocities of World War II. Archive yields a Beckett<br>who monitored propaganda in speeches and newspapers and whose creative work engages with specific political strategies rhetoric and events. Finally Beckett's political aesthetic sharpens into focus. <p/>Deep within form Beckett models ominous historical developments as surely as he satirizes artistic and philosophical interpretations that overlook them. He burdens aesthetic production with guilt: imagination and language theater and narrative all parallel political techniques. Beckett comically<br>embodies conservative religious and political doctrines; he plays Irish colonial history against contemporary European horrors; he examines aesthetic complicity in effecting atrocity and covering it up. This book offers insightful original and vivid readings of Beckett's work up to <em>Three Novels</em><br><em>and Endgame</em>.<br>