Startseite Literaturwissenschaften More than an Artist in the Making: Samuel Beckett’s “Assumption” Revisited
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

More than an Artist in the Making: Samuel Beckett’s “Assumption” Revisited

  • José Francisco Fernández EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 17. September 2019
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill
Anglia
Aus der Zeitschrift Anglia Band 137 Heft 3

Abstract

Samuel Beckett’s first published short story, “Assumption” (1929), is usually described as an apprentice work, “a piece of marginally interesting juvenilia” (Pattie 2000: 52), a beginner’s attempt toward a modernist short story in which the influence of James Joyce is clear. Indeed, it has been claimed that Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the model underlying Beckett’s early foray into creative fiction. The current paper seeks to reassess the established critical appreciation of “Assumption”, that of being a parody of Joyce’s novel by a playful disciple; instead, I will argue that Beckett was in fact questioning the very principles of his master’s art. If Portrait is the epitome of the Künstlerroman, Beckett in his short piece debunked the myth of the young artist by consciously downgrading the aesthetic concerns of his protagonist and by disrupting the revered categories of modernist fiction.[1]

Works Cited

Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski. 2004. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Albright, Daniel. 2003. Beckett and Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Balakian, Anna. 1971. André Breton: Magus of Surrealism. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Beckett, Samuel. 1970. More Pricks than Kicks. London: Calder and Boyars.Suche in Google Scholar

Beckett, Samuel. 2006 a. “Assumption”. In: Paul Auster (ed.). Samuel Beckett. The Grove Centenary Edition. Volume IV. New York: Grove Press. 57–60.Suche in Google Scholar

Beckett, Samuel. 2006 b. “Dante...Bruno. Vico..Joyce”. In: Paul Auster (ed.). Samuel Beckett. The Grove Centenary Edition. Volume IV. New York: Grove Press. 495–510.Suche in Google Scholar

Beckett, Samuel. 2009. The Letters of Samuel Beckett 19291940. Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck (eds.). Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Cohn, Ruby. 2005. A Beckett Canon. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Collinson, Diané. 1983. “The Aesthetic Theory of Stephen Dedalus”. British Journal of Aesthetics 23. 1 (Winter): 61–73.10.1093/bjaesthetics/23.1.61Suche in Google Scholar

Cronin, Anthony. 1996. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. London: HarperCollins.Suche in Google Scholar

Deane, Seamus. 1992. “Introduction”. In: James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin. vii-xliii.Suche in Google Scholar

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas and Michael Patrick Gillespie. 2006. Critical Companion to James Joyce: A Literary Reference to his Life and Work. New York: Checkmark Books.Suche in Google Scholar

Feldman, Matthew. 2009. “‘Agnostic Quietism’ and Samuel Beckett’s Early Development”. In: Seán Kennedy and Katherine Weiss (eds.). Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 183–200.Suche in Google Scholar

Friedman, Alan Warren. 2018. Surreal Beckett: Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, and Surrealism. New York and London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315102580Suche in Google Scholar

Gang, Joshua. 2013. “Mindless Modernism”. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 46, 1: 116–132.Suche in Google Scholar

Gordon, Lois. 1996. The World of Samuel Beckett 1906-1946. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Gussow, Mel. 1996. Conversations with (and about) Beckett. London: Nick Hern Books.Suche in Google Scholar

Hayman, David. 1971. “A Meeting in the Park and a Meeting on the Bridge: Joyce and Beckett”. James Joyce Quarterly 8, 4 (Summer): 372–384.Suche in Google Scholar

Israel, Nico. 2013. “Contemporary Visual Art”. In: Anthony Uhlmann (ed.). Samuel Beckett in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 255–265.Suche in Google Scholar

Joyce, James. 2007. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. John Paul Riquelme (ed.). New York: Norton.Suche in Google Scholar

Kenner, Hugh. 2007. “Joyce’s Portrait – A Reconsideration”. In: James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. John Paul Riquelme (ed.). New York: Norton. 348–366.Suche in Google Scholar

Mays, J.C.C. 1984. “Young Beckett’s Irish Roots”. Irish University Review 14,1: 18–33.Suche in Google Scholar

Miller, Tyrus. 1999. Late Modernism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Morin, Emilie. 2017. Beckett’s Political Imagination: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781108284011Suche in Google Scholar

Murphy, P.J. 2009. Beckett’s Dedalus: Dialogical Engagements with Joyce in Beckett’s Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 10.3138/9781442687400Suche in Google Scholar

Nixon, Mark. 2007. “Beckett and Romanticism in the 1930s”. In: Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon (eds.). ‘All Sturm and no Drang’. Beckett and Romanticism: Beckett at Reading 2006. Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 18. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 61–76. 10.1163/18757405-018001005Suche in Google Scholar

O’Hara, J.D. 1999. “‘Assumption,’s Launching Pad”. Journal of Beckett Studies 8, 2: 29–43.Suche in Google Scholar

Pattie, David. 2000. The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203355084Suche in Google Scholar

Pilling, John. 2011. Samuel Beckett’s ‘More Pricks than Kicks’: In a Strait of Two Wills. London and New York: Continuum.Suche in Google Scholar

Pilling, John. 2015. “Early Beckett”. In: Dirk Van Hulle (ed.). The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Cambridge University Press. 3–18.10.1017/CCO9781139871525.004Suche in Google Scholar

Rabaté, Jean-Michel. 2016. Think, Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human. New York: Fordham University Press. 10.1515/9780823270880Suche in Google Scholar

Sheehan, Paul. 2013. “Modernism: Dublin/Paris/London”. In: Anthony Uhlmann (ed.). Samuel Beckett in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 139–149.Suche in Google Scholar

Slote, Sam. 2013. “The Joyce Circle”. In: Anthony Uhlmann (ed.). Samuel Beckett in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 150–159.Suche in Google Scholar

Van Hulle, Dirk. 2005. “‘Nichtsnichtsundnichts’: Beckett’s and Joyce’s Transtextual Undoings”. In: Coleen Jaurretche (ed.). Beckett, Joyce and the Art of the Negative: European Joyce Studies 16. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 49–61. Suche in Google Scholar

Vichnar, David. 2014. “Coincidental Opposites: A Portrait of Samuel Beckett as a Young Joyce”. In: Radvan Markus, Hana Pavelková, Einal Adar and Michaela Marková (eds.). Tradition and Modernity: New Essays in Irish Studies. Prague: Faculty of Arts-Charles University. 13–25.Suche in Google Scholar

Weller, Shane. 2015. “Beckett and Late Modernism”. In: Dirk Van Hulle (ed.). The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Cambridge University Press. 89–102.10.1017/CCO9781139871525.011Suche in Google Scholar

Zurbrugg, Nicholas. 1988. Beckett and Proust. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe. Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2019-09-17
Published in Print: 2019-09-13

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Articles
  4. Victorian Mages: Robert Browning’s “Pietro of Abano” as a Critical Corollary to Alfred Tennyson’s Merlin
  5. Of ‘Household Gods’ and Devils: Fetishism in The Old Curiosity Shop
  6. More than an Artist in the Making: Samuel Beckett’s “Assumption” Revisited
  7. John Barth and David Foster Wallace: An Abortive Patricide
  8. False Generosity of the State: Parasitic Subjectivity in J. M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K
  9. Reviews
  10. Matti Peikola, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Liisa Varila and Janne Skaffari (eds.). 2017. Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 37. Turnhout: Brepols, xii+280 pp., 30 illustr., 11 graphs, 9 tables, € 80.00.
  11. Brandon W. Hawk. 2018. Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 30. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, xvii + 271 pp., 7 figures, $ 65.00.
  12. Thorlac Turville-Petre. 2018. Description and Narrative in Middle English Alliterative Poetry. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, viii + 222 pp., £ 85.00.
  13. Susanna Fein (ed.). 2016. The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives. Manuscript Culture in the British Isles. York: York Medieval Press/Woodbridge: Boydell, xi + 253 pp., 6 figures, £ 60.00 (hb)/£ 25.00 (pb).
  14. Omar Khalaf (ed.). 2017. Alexander and Dindimus. Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264. Middle English Texts 55. Heidelberg: Winter, liv + 80 pp., 8 plates, 2 tables, € 44.00.
  15. Traugott Lawler. 2018. The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman. Volume 4: C Passūs 15–19; B Passūs 13–17. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, xv + 499 pp., $ 89.95/£ 69.00.
  16. Martina Bross. 2017. Versions of Hamlet: Poetic Economy on Page and Stage. Beiträge zur Englischen und Amerikanischen Literatur 35. Paderborn: Schöningh, 354 pp., € 59.00.
  17. Kathrin Tordasi. 2018. Women by the Waterfront: Modernist (Re)Visions of Gender, Self and Littoral Space. Epistemata: Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Studien – Reihe Literaturwissenschaft 890. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 348 pp., 7 illustr., € 48.00.
  18. John Kinsella and Russell West-Pavlov. 2018. Temporariness: On the Imperatives of Place. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 372 pp., 37 illustr., € 69.90.
  19. Colin Wells. 2018. Poetry Wars: Verse and Politics in the American Revolution and Early Republic. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 342 pp, $ 55.00/£ 44.00.
  20. Christoph Lanzen. 2018. Physicians of Culture: Healing Catharsis in the Fiction of Toni Morrison and the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Heidelberg: Winter, 172 pp., € 35.00.
Heruntergeladen am 4.2.2026 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/ang-2019-0038/pdf
Button zum nach oben scrollen