Samuel Beckett and Catastrophe

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 Professor at University of Tsukuba, Japan. She has published articles and books on Beckett and Arendt. Her publications include The Space of Vacillation: The Experience of Language in Beckett, Blanchot, and Heidegger (2003). With Mariko Hori Tanaka and Yoshiki Tajiri, she co-edited Samuel Beckett and Pain (2012) and Samuel Beckett and trauma (2018). 

Yoshiki Tajiri is Professor at the University of Tokyo. He has published widely on Samuel Beckett, J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro and other authors. His publications include Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body (Palgrave, 2007).

Mariko Hori Tanaka is Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. She co-edited four collections of essays on Beckett in English and authored two books on Beckett in Japanese including Revised Versions of Waiting for Godot: Beckett as Director (2017). 

Chapter “Slow Violence and Slow Going: Encountering Beckett in the Time of Climate Catastrophe” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.