Beckett, Technology and the Body

Critics have often focused on interiority in Beckett’s works, privileging the mind over the body. In this intriguing approach, the first sustained analysis of embodiment in Beckett’s prose, drama and media works, Ulrika Maude argues that physical and sensory experience is in fact central to the understanding of Beckett’s writing. In innovative readings of sight, hearing, touch and movement in the full range of Beckett’s works, Ulrika Maude uncovers the author’s effort to shed light on embodied experience, paying attention to Beckett’s interests in medicine and body-altering technologies such as prostheses. Through these material, bodily concerns Beckett explores wider themes of subjectivity and experience, interiority and exteriority, foregrounding the inextricable relationship between the body, the senses and the self. This important study offers a fascinating approach to Beckett, one in which the body takes its rightful place alongside the mind.