A reading of Samuel Beckett in the light of Hegel, Heidegger and Sartre

Abstract

The thesis: "The easiest thing of all is to pass judgement on what has a solid substantial content; it is more difficult to grasp it and most of all difficult to do both together and produce the systematic exposition of it". (Hegel).

Since at least 1960 there has been a considerable amount of critical attention paid to Beckett. Besides articles, reviews, chapters and paragraphs, by 1979 more, than sixty books had been published devoted exclusively to him. A lot of this critical work has been of the highest standard and certainly it is hard to imagine how a serious appreciation of Beckett could survive without it. But it is my opinion that at the heart of his writing there is an inescapable mass of involvement with the fundamental issues of existence that has yet to be dealt with adequately. In this thesis I intend to attack this central core of Beckett's work by associating it with the discipline which, by definition, operates in the same area - philosophy. This will provide a new "reading" of Beckett and at the same time show how far philosophical analogy can illuminate a writer.