Sadean Intertext and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett's Works (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)

This is the first full-length study of the relevance of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) to the works of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989).Since the publication of his correspondence between 2009 and 2016, Beckett's interest in Sade has become more widely known and the question of a Sadean presence in Beckett's ?uvre has been drawing increasing critical attention.However, Sade's sulphurous reputation tends to overshadow the complex intellectual implications of his thought and works, at the crossroads between philosophy, politics, pornography, and poetry.This book provides novel ways to make sense of Sade's appeal for Beckett beyond his taste for the irreverent: indeed, beneath Sade's 'obscenity of surface', Beckett found a world of discourses simultaneously nourished by and revolting against key philosophical and ideological traditions that had shaped the Enlightenment and from which Modernism would later emerge.This research identifies empirical evidence of Sadean intertext in Beckett's works