Beckett's Dedalus: Dialogical Engagements with Joyce in Beckett's Fiction »

P.J. Murphy is a professor in the Department of English at Thompson Rivers University.

Given that the Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was personally acquainted with the modernist master James Joyce, and even helped research and promote Finnegans Wake, it should come as no surprise that Beckett was greatly influenced by Joyce's own work. However, much analysis of Beckett's work tends to argue that he forged his own artistic identity in opposition to Joyce, seeking and eventually finding styles and methods unoccupied by his "mentor." Beckett's Dedalus is a comprehensive reassessment of this line of criticism and traces the nature and extent of Joyce's influence in more complex, contestatory, and complementary ways throughout all of Beckett's major fiction.

Paying close attention to the extensive network of allusions Beckett derived from Joyce's writing, P.J. Murphy reveals how Beckett consistently echoed and engaged in dialogue with Joyce's works, especially A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and, in particular, its protagonist Stephen Dedalus. This study proposes that the relationship between the two writers was a complex life-giving and art-building dialogue concerned with aesthetic theories, depictions of reality, and the artistic integrity needed to carry out these critical investigations.

Beckett's Dedalus is a fascinating study of the literary influence one generation has on the next. It will change the way we consider the relationship between two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Abbreviations

Prolegomenon to Any Future Beckett Criticism 3

1 Portraits of the Artist as a Young Critic: Beckett's 'Dante...Bruno...Vico...Joyce' and the Rewriting of Joyce in 'Assumption' 20

2 Dreams of a Fair to Middling Critic-Artist: The Nature of Symbol in Proust and the Role of Portrait as 'Structural Convenience' in Beckett's First Novel 44

3 Re-joyce-ing Murphy 91

4 What's What in Watt 122

5 The Pseudocouple Dante-Joyce: The Nature of the 'Revelation' in Mercier and Camier and Stories 151

6 A Not So 'Distant Music': Joycean Counterpoint in the Trilogy 177

7 Critical Beckett: Incorporating Joyce in the Post-Trilogy Works 201

Notes 227

Bibliography 255

Index of Works 263

Index of Names 266