Read complete books and articles on: Waiting for Godot

Beckett, Samuel - bĕkˈĭt, 1906–89, Anglo-French playwright and novelist, b. Dublin. Beckett studied and taught in Paris before settling there permanently in 1937. He wrote primarily in French, frequently translating his works into English himself. His first published novel, Murphy (1938), typifies his later works by eliminating the traditional elements of plot, character, and setting. Instead, he presents the experience of waiting and struggling with a pervading sense of futility. The anguish of persisting in a meaningless world is intensified in Beckett's subsequent novels including Watt (1942–44); the trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953); How It Is (1961); and The Lost Ones (1972). In his theater of the absurd, Beckett combined poignant humor with an overwhelming sense of anguish and loss. Best known and most controversial of his dramas are Waiting for Godot (1952) and Endgame (1957), which have been performed throughout the world. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Beckett's other works include a major study of Proust (1931); the plays Krapp's Last Tape (1959) and Happy Days (1961); a screenplay, Film (1969); short stories, Breath (1966) and Lessness (1970); collected shorter prose in Stories and Texts for Nothing (tr. 1967), No's Knife (1967), and The Complete Short Prose: 1929–1989 (1996, ed. by S. E. Gontarski); volumes of collected writings, More Pricks than Kicks (1970) and First Love and Other Shorts (1974); and Poems (1963). His Collected Works (16 vol.) was published in 1970 and a comprehensive centenary edition (5 vol.) was published in 2006. Beckett's first works of fiction and drama were both published posthumously, the novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932) in 1992 and the play Eleuthéria (1947) in 1995.

See biographies by D. Bair (1980), J. Knowlson (1996), and A. Cronin (1997); J. and E. Knowlson, Beckett Remembering/Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration (2006); memoir, How It Was (2006) by A. Atik; studies by H. Kenner (1968 and 1973), R. Cohn (1972 and 1973), S. Connor (1986), P. Gidal (1986), R. Pountney (1988), L. Gordon (1996), J. D. O'Hara (1998), and A Uhlmann and S. E. Gontarski, ed. (2006).

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10 of the Best Books and Articles on: Waiting for Godot

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (literary criticism) » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 131 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

-- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature
-- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism
-- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index
2.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: A Reference Guide » Read Now
by William Hutchings. 172 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
3.

A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett (Chap. 1 "Waiting for Godot") » Read Now
by Hugh Kenner. 208 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
4.

The Globalization of Beckett's Godot, in Comparative Drama » Read Now
by Enoch Brater. 14 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
5.

The Secret Cause: A Discussion of Tragedy (Chap. 5 "Boundary Situation: King Lear & Waiting for Godot") » Read Now
by Normand Berlin. 189 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
6.

No-Thing Is Left to Tell: Zen/Chaos Theory in the Dramatic Art of Samuel Beckett (Chap. 3 "Waiting in Godot: The Distance between Arrow and Target") » Read Now
by John Leeland Kundert-Gibbs. 238 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
7.

Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett ("Bad Habits while Waiting for Godot: The Demythification of Ritual" begins on p. 124) » Read Now
by Katherine H. Burkman. 170 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
8.

The Erotic Bird: Phenomenology in Literature (Chap. Four "Waiting for Godot") » Read Now
by Maurice Natanson. 169 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Literature, Entire Library

How does literature illuminate the way we live? Maurice Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. By exploring the structure of the everyday world, Natanson reveals...
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How does literature illuminate the way we live? Maurice Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. By exploring the structure of the everyday world, Natanson reveals the "uncanny" that lies at the core of the ordinary. Phenomenology--which involves the questioning of that which we usually take for granted--is for Natanson the essence of philosophy.
Drawing upon his philosophical predecessors Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Natanson paves his own way with stories and examples that themselves bear witness to how phenomenology occurs in literature. In considering such works as Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot, Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain, and Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis, Natanson shows how literature opens us to the domain of possibility and how metaphor offers philosophical power when we think about freedom and change.
This book, written by one of the twentieth century's leading phenomenologists, will interest students in philosophy and in literature. They will valu
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9.

Samuel Beckett and the Primacy of Love (Chap. 4 "A Strange Situation: Self-Entrapment in Waiting for Godot") » Read Now
by John Robert Keller. 226 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
10.

Democracy & the Arts ("Waiting for Godot and the End of History: Postmodernism as a Democratic Aesthetic" begins on p. 172) » Read Now
by Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, M. Richard Zinman. 224 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Politics has taken a cultural turn in America, and the arts are at the center of today's culture wars. In this book, some of our most prominent cultural critics explore the relationships between culture and politics as played out in the world of novels, television, museums, and even fashion. The...
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Politics has taken a cultural turn in America, and the arts are at the center of today's culture wars. In this book, some of our most prominent cultural critics explore the relationships between culture and politics as played out in the world of novels, television, museums, and even fashion. The authors -- John Simon, Greil Marcus, Arthur C. Danto, and other well-known commentators from across the political spectrum -- examine the arts in their relation to democracy and consider whether and how they serve one another.
The authors consider such topics as high and popular culture in democratic America; the relation of democracy to classical, jazz, and folk music; and the artistic potential of the most democratic of all arts, the movies. All of the essays are as entertaining as they are thoughtful.
With its roots in popular sentiment, democracy will forever be entwined with art, a force that powerfully molds popular taste. Democracy and the Arts speaks elegantly to that relationship and reminds readers of its enduring importance.
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