The complete critical guide to Samuel BECKETT by David Pattie

Comme son nom l’indique, ce livre se présente comme un guide critique complet. C’est en fait une bonne introduction pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas encore, ou très peu, les oeuvres de Samuel Beckett.

Voici le sommaire :
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Referencing
Section 1 : Life and Context
Section 2 : Work
Section 3 : Criticism
Chronology
Bibliography

Le style de David Pattie est très agréable à lire, comme cet appel au lecteur : "In an attempt to prevent as many headaches as possible for the interested reader, I will be limiting my study of Beckett criticism in two ways."

EXTRAIT (p. 52)

This passage from the story ’Sedendo et Quiescendo’ is by no means the most obscure in the early prose ; but it is a fair example of the style that Beckett first adopted. It is inconsistent, to say the least ; at this stage in his career, Beckett characteristically juxtaposed the most learned references with a prose that was, if anything, aggressively colloquial. This not only makes the sense of the passage difficult to discern ; it also puts a great strain on the structure of the sentences themselves. In Joyce, references are incorporated into the prose ; in early Beckett, one sometimes gets the sense that references (and the more obscure the reference the better) are nailed on to the phrases and sentences that are already fully formed. Althought this can, on occasion, give rise to passages of memorable comedy (as it does in the best stories in More Pricks than Kicks, it is undoubtedly true that his earlier works are frequently rather tiring on the casual reader.