Samuel Beckett and Catastrophe (eBook)

Samuel Beckett and Catastrophe is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that explore the relation between Samuel Beckett and catastrophe in terms of war, the Holocaust, nuclear disasters and ecological crisis. Responding to the post-catastrophic situations in the twentieth century, Beckett created characters who often seem to have been through an unknown catastrophe.  Although the importance of catastrophe in Beckett has been noted sporadically, there has been no substantial attempt to discuss his aesthetics and work in relation to it. This collection will therefore serve as the first sustained study to explore the theme of catastrophe in Beckett and will be a highly significant contribution to Beckett studies.

Michiko Tsushima is a Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan. She has published a number of articles on modern literature and contemporary thought including articles on Beckett and Arendt. She is the author of ''The Skin of Words': Trauma and Skin in Watt' in Samuel Beckett and trauma (2018) co-edited by Mariko Hori Tanaka and Yoshiki Tajiri. She published Hannah Arendt: Reconciling Ourselves to the World (in Japanese, 2016). Her articles on Beckett include 'The Appearance of the Human at the Limit of Representation: Beckett and Pain in the Experience of Language' in Samuel Beckett and Pain (2012) and ''Memory is the Belly of the Mind': Augustine's Concept of Memory in Beckett' in Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui (2008). She also published The Space of Vacillation: The Experience of Language in Beckett, Blanchot, and Heidegger (2003).

Yoshiki Tajiri is Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He has published extensively on modernism in English literature, Samuel Beckett, J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Yukio Mishima and other authors. He has edited Samuel Beckett and trauma (2018) and Samuel Beckett and Pain (2012) with Mariko Hori Tanaka and Michiko Tsushima, and published Beckett and Company (in Japanese, 2009) and Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body: The Organs and Senses in Modernism (Palgrave, 2007). He has co-translated James Knowlson's biography of Beckett, Damned to Fame, and James & Elizabeth Knowlson's Beckett Remembering / Remembering Beckett. He is also the translator of Beckett's first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women.

Mariko Hori Tanaka is Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. She has published various articles on Samuel Beckett and other playwrights. She co-edited Beckett's Voices / Voicing Beckett (2021) with Laurens De Vos and Nicholas E. Johnson, Influencing Beckett / Beckett Influencing (2020) with Anita Rákóczy and Nicholas E. Johnson and two collections of essays on Beckett with Yoshiki Tajiri and Michiko Tsushima. She authored two books on Beckett in Japanese; Revised Versions of Waiting for Godot: Beckett as Director (2017) for which she was awarded the 28^th Yoshida Hidekazu Prize (given to the best critical essay in the field of art, music, architecture, film and theatre published within a year) and Beckett Pilgrimage (2007).