SBT/A 19 features selected papers from the Borderless Beckett / Beckett sans frontières Symposium held in Tokyo at Waseda University in 2006. The essays penned by eminent and young scholars from around the world examine the many ways Beckett’s art crosses borders: coupling reality and dream, life and death, as in Japanese Noh drama, or transgressing distinctions between limits and limitlessness; humans, animals, virtual bodies, and stones; French and English; words and silence; and the received frameworks of philosophy and aesthetics.
The highlight of the volume is the contribution by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, the special guest of the Symposium. His article entitled “Eight Ways of Looking at Samuel Beckett” introduces a variety of novel approaches to Beckett, ranging from a comparative analysis of his work and Melville’s Moby Dick to a biographical observation concerning Beckett’s application for a lectureship at a South African university. Other highlights include innovative essays by the plenary speakers and panelists – Enoch Brater, Mary Bryden, Bruno Clément, Steven Connor, S. E. Gontarski, Evelyne Grossman, and Angela Moorjani – and an illuminating section on Beckett’s television dramas.
The Borderless Beckett volume renews our awareness of the admirable quality and wide range of approaches that characterize Beckett studies.