Carnivals of Ruin
Beckett, Ireland, and the Festival Form

This Element unpacks what it means to festivalise Beckett and examines how Beckett's work may offer grounds for critique of the festival form.

Trish McTighe (Author)

9781108965699, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 January 2023

75 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.4 cm, 0.116 kg

Beckett's work is somewhat out of step with the logic of commemoration and celebration. Festival, with its association with celebration, spectacle, and publicity, would not seem the ideal vehicle for Beckett's work. Yet that work has become highly festivalised, and the incongruities between it and festival forms provide a useful basis from which to examine both Beckett as festivalised commodity and festivals themselves. Festivalising Beckett in Ireland might be characterised as a way of bringing him back home, as well as a way of returning him to the canonical fold - he showed little interest in either during his later years, it need hardly be added. This Element examines Beckett's dissidence in the face of these imperatives of nation, home and the canon, utilising Beckett's work in festival contexts to highlight in the negative the nature of the festival form and to critique the festivalisation of culture.

Introduction: Upon Ruinous Foundations
1. More Ruins: The Festival and the Author's Face
2. Beckett as Irish Icon: A Genealogy of Festivalisation
3. Festival Space: Staging the City
4. Tourist Epistemologies: The Beckett Bus
5. Festival Time: Carnivals of Ruin
Conclusion: Degenerate Gatherings.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]