Beckett’s Late Stage

Beckett's Late Stage reexamines the Nobel laureate's post-war prose and drama in the light of contemporary trauma theory. Through a series of sustained close-readings, the study demonstrates how the comings and goings of Beckett's prose unsettles the Western philosophical tradition; it reveals how Beckett's live theatrical productions are haunted by the rehearsal of traumatic repetition, and asks what his ghostly radio recordings might signal for twentieth-century modernity. Drawing from psychoanalytic and poststructuralist traditions, Beckett's Late Stage explores how the traumatic symptom allows us to rethink the relationship between language, meaning, and identity after 1945.

Rhys Tranter is a writer and photographer currently based in Cardiff, Wales. His writing has appeared in international publications, including the Times Literary Supplement, and he works on the editorial board of the Samuel Beckett Society. His website at RhysTranter.com promotes literature and the arts to over 10,000 daily subscribers, and was recently selected to join the British Library's UK Web Archive.