A Beckett Canon

by Ruby Cohn

Published 1 December 2005
This is an indispensable guide to the remarkable oeuvre of Samuel Beckett, spanning a period of sixty years. ""A Beckett Canon"" by renowned theater scholar Ruby Cohn offers an invaluable guide to the entire corpus, commenting on Beckett's work in its original language. Beginning in 1929 with Beckett's earliest work, the book examines the variety of genres in which he worked: poems, short stories, novels, plays, radio pieces, teleplays, reviews, and criticism. Cohn grapples with the difficulties in Beckett's work, including the opaque erudition of the early English verse and fiction, and the searching depths and syntactical ellipsis of the late works. Intended as a resource to accompany the reading of Beckett's writing - in English or French, published or unpublished, in part or as a whole - the book offers context, information, and interpretation of the work of one of the last century's most important writers.