Overview

In the wake of both Joycean and Dantean celebrations, this volume aims to investigate the fecund influence of Italian culture on Samuel Beckett’s work, with a specific focus on the twentieth century. Located at the intersection of historical avant-garde movements and a renewed interest in tradition, Italian modernism reimagined Italy and its culture, projecting it beyond the shadow of fascism. Following in Joyce’s footsteps, Samuel Beckett soon became an attentive reader of Italian modernist authors. These had a profound effect on his early work, shaping his artistic identity. The influence of his early readings found its way also into Beckett’s postwar writing and, most poignantly, in his theatre. The contributions in this collection rekindle the debate around Beckett as modernist author through the lenses of Italian culture. This study will be of particular interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies, Italian studies, English studies, and comparative literature.

Full Product Details

Author:   Michela Bariselli ,  Davide Crosara ,  Antonio Gambacorta ,  Mario Martino
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
ISBN:  

9781032372143

ISBN 10:   1032372141
Pages:   250
Publication Date:   22 June 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Part 1 Beckett and Italian Interwar Culture 1. Beckett’s Dystopian Trilogy, Part I: Lucky’s ‘Cerebral Physiology’ and the Irrelevance of Godot 2. Leopardi in Beckett’s Late Modernist Romanticism 3. Mirror Acts: Dramatic Form in Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot Part 2 Beckett, Modernism and Tradition: Absurdism and Purgatorial Shadows 4. Analogymongering: Dante and Vico in Beckett 5. ‘Denti Alligator’ or ‘Airtight Alligator’: Reading Dante with Joyce and Beckett 6. Beckett and Ariosto: Nominalist Irony, ‘Perhaps’ 7. Beckett’s Kickoff: Orlando Furioso as Theatre of the Absurd Part 3 Beckett, Italian Modernism and Late Modernism: Theatre, Intermediality and Testimony 8. Samuel Beckett and Italian Culture: From Dantesque Scenarios to the Theatre Scene of the 2000s 9. Samuel Beckett’s Not I – Purgatorially Merciful? 10. ‘A Theatre of Concrete Visual Images […], a Theatre of Poetic Images’: The Staging of Neither by the Italian Video‑Art Group Studio Azzurro 11. ‘Company’: Beckett, Tabucchi, and Testimony

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Author Information

Michela Bariselli is a Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, University of Reading. Davide Crosara is a Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Rome, Sapienza. Antonio Gambacorta is a translator and a literary scholar with a PhD from the University of Reading. Mario Martino is Professor of English Literature at the University of Rome, Sapienza.

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