Beckett and Eros Death of Humanism

The decade since Beckett's death has seen new interests in the erotic sweeping through our culture, acting in uneasy counterpoint to its established humanistic infrastructure and opening new questions about the significance of sexuality. Surprisingly or not, Beckett has startling further light to throw on the erotic phenomenon variously but insistently recognised in our time. This book is the first to propose a 'mythopoetics of sex' with which to explore Beckett's work as a whole.

Acknowledgements Preface PART I: WOMB OF THE GREAT MOTHER EMPTINESS: Mythopoetics Contexts for Beckett Beckett and Eros: Mentioning the Unmentionable Mythographic Reading Elysium of the Roofless Beckett, the Heart Sutra, and dzogchen Complete Being PART II: THE DARK STREAM: Beckett's Mythologies of Eros What it is Their Humanity Stifles ( Eleutheria, The Unnamable, Texts For Nothing ) After the Second Crisis: Entering the Cylinder ( How It Is, Imagination Dead Imagine, Words and Music ) Krapp's Tapes and the Myth of Recurrence ( Krapp's Last Tape ) Mrs Rooney at the Mouth of Creation ( All that Fall ) Care and Punish ( Roughs for Theatre and Radio, As The Story Was Told ) Madness of the Norm ( Not I, That Time, Footfalls ) Open Sky Mind ( Cascando, Nohow On, Stirrings Still ) That Unheeded Neither ( neither ) Notes Bibliography Index

Paul Davies is Lecturer in English at the University of Ulster, UK.