Lexington Books
Pages: 236
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-0-7391-7739-6 • Hardback • August 2013 • $108.00 • (£83.00)
978-1-4985-1646-4 • Paperback • March 2015 • $54.99 • (£42.00)
Ranjan Ghosh teaches in the Department of English at the University of North Bengal. He is widely published in journals like The Oxford LiteraryReview, History and Theory, parallax, Rethinking History, South Asia, SubStance, symploke, The Comparatist and others. Among his recent books include Lover’sQuarrel with the Past: Romance, Representation, Reading (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), Edward Said, the Literary, Social and the PoliticalWorld (New York: Routledge, 2009), Making Sense of the Secular (New York: Routledge, 2012), Presence: Philosophy, History and Cultural Theory for the 21st Century (Cornell University Press, 2013, with Ethan Kleinberg).
Introduction: Dialogic-Godotic
Ranjan Ghosh
The Politics of Identification in Waiting for Godot
Graley Herren
“What have I said?” Vladimir’s Tragic Recognition
Mark S. Byron
Alone and Together: The Psychic Structure of the Couple in Waiting for Godot
Mary Catanzaro
Beckett contra Aristotle: A Choral Reading of Waiting for Godot
Tom Cousineau
Waiting upon each other: work and play in waiting for Godot
Ranjan Ghosh
Rien à faire: The Para-Messianics of Delay in Godot
Stephen Barker
Waiting For Nothing: Commitment, Resistance, and Godot’s Underground Ancestry
Paul Sheehan
Scrutinizing the feminine in Waiting for Godot: Vladimir and Estragon await their couples counsellor
Art Horowitz
Beckett’s Lucky Chance: Speculation in Waiting for Godot
Eyal Amiran
Samuel Beckett’s Playland: The Profane and Infantile Politics of Waiting for Godot
Maria Margaroni
‘Who is Godot?’ Beckett and Allegory
Shane Weller
Culture, Politics and Human Rights in Waiting for Godot
Wanda Balzano
Index
About the Authors
Ghosh has assembled 13 outstanding essays that review Beckett's most popular drama. The volume's contributors engage the play in meaningful contexts that have important implications for performance, production, and scholarship. Standout essays explore the political contexts of site-specific productions in Sarajevo and post-Katrina New Orleans; the affinities and contrasts of Godot to classical Greek tragedy; Beckett and allegory; and the psychodynamics of friendship and coupling. Beckett's attempt to redefine theater in postwar Europe is also explored, as are the ways in which Beckett's experiences in the French resistance suffuse this play and his other postwar writing. The essays contemplate the drama within a range of political and philosophical contexts, including issues of torture and human rights, Marxist and psychoanalytic thought, philosophical reflections on the eternal return, Aristotle's Poetics, poststructuralism, and Hindu philosophy. Taken together they shed contemporary light on this drama in ways that are suggestive for actors, directors, and scholars, and provide valuable insights into the criticism and practices of this most popular of Beckett's plays. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.
— Choice Reviews
Godot’s 'Underground Ancestry,' 'Vladimir’s Tragic Recognition,' 'The Feminine' in play, motifs of 'Speculation' and 'Infantile Politics,' editor’s Ghosh’s own placing the theme of work and play within what he has called elsewhere 'the wordling of the drama'—what a rich collection of approaches to Waiting for Godot! And as someone who works in the theatre, I also find this commentary wonderfully suggestive for both actors and directors.
— Sidney Homan, University of Florida
This varied and provocative collection of essays on Beckett's most famous play animates new and productive dialogues with an extraordinary array of thinkers. Situating the writing and performance of Godot in a range of historical contexts, the essays involve Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Hindu philosophy, Adorno, Gramsci, Brecht, Derrida, Sontag, Foucauld, Aristotle and Agamben in intertextual engagement with this profoundly though perversely allusive drama.
— Robert Gordon, Goldsmith College, University of London