Beckett's Spectral Silence: Breath and the Sublime
Of Samuel Beckett’s late plays, the one that most eloquently resists presentation, that retires from visibility, remaining almost completely hidden except for faint light and a brief cry over a glimpse of detritus is Breath. Though regarded as a ‘logical terminal point in Beckett’s writing for theatre’ when it appeared, it wrong-footed critical expectation, pointing instead to the much reduced plays of the 1970s. The paper examines Beckett’s Breath, theatre productions of the play––in particular that of Amanda Coogan––and the film version of Breath directed by Damien Hirst, in terms of Kant’s analytic of the sublime, in particular Kant’s idea of the sublime as that which is beyond the limits of size and representability. Drawing on Longinus, Lyotard and Derrida, the paper argues, through Beckett, for a reconfiguration of the sublime in terms of an absolute minimum.
Item Type | Article |
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Subjects |
Mass Communications and Documentation > Film studies Linguistics, Classics and related subjects > English Literature Linguistics, Classics and related subjects > English Literature by author European Languages, Literature and related subjects > French Literature Creative Arts and Design > Fine Art Creative Arts and Design > Theatre studies |
Departments, Centres and Research Units |
English and Comparative Literature Research Office > REF2014 |
Date Deposited | 15 Nov 2011 14:23 |
Last Modified | 29 Apr 2020 15:31 |
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