Dictionnaire Beckett ed. by Marie-Claude Hubert

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Reviews 267 (146).Anzieu objects to Lacan’s concept of the self,but seems close to it.Kristeva’s treatment of passion and subjectivity surpasses others. Since the 1970s, she has analyzed three main versions of love: romantic, maternal, and transferential (in psychoanalysis). Like Lacan, she assigns a primary role to language in all her analyses, which tend to elide the real, physical body—ageing, sick, or dying. Howells’s interests in Derrida focus on his studies of mourning, particularly, how to remain faithful to the memory of a friend while respecting his alterity. He speaks as a survivor, whereas Nancy can speak as a person dying. Like Kristeva, Nancy separates love and desire, while mingling desire and pleasure. He rejects the idea of a body infused by the spirit, seeing bodies as a medley of ever-changing relationships to externality. After a heart transplant, he better than any other contemporary philosopher understands the subject as a concrete, inescapable reality (214). Howells’s helpful conclusion should be read first.A judicious, well-informed tour de force, her book typifies Polity’s high-level popularizations in the social sciences. Oberlin College Affiliate Scholar Laurence M. Porter Hubert, Marie-Claude, éd. Dictionnaire Beckett. Paris: Champion, 2011. ISBN 978-27453 -2144-2. Pp. 1200. 180 a. This dictionary is the result of a collaborative effort by sixty international specialists of diverse generations and levels of research experience that Hubert brought together to do justice to the richness of the work of Beckett, the Irish playwright, poet, and Nobel Prize winner (1969) who has the rare distinction of having written prolifically in French and English. This dictionary covers Beckett’s seminal work in the second half of the twentieth century. Beckett was also an essayist, art critic, and director, who played a leading role in the creation of the“Nouveau Roman”as well as the“Nouveau Théâtre”. Beckett’s early poetry and critical essays received little attention, and his favorably reviewed novels were read only among a small circle of friends and acquaintances until he was discovered in 1953 with En attendant Godot. A major event in the history of theater (13), Godot fascinated audiences all over the world; Hubert describes how it revolutionized Western theater and became a classic, which was incorporated in the Comédie-Française repertory (399). In the sixties, academic critics viewed Beckett’s work as“the expression of despair, controlled by constant irony and humor”(13–14). In a“Note to the Present Edition,”Hubert, author of many entries, states that the purpose of this dictionary is to present the contemporary state of knowledge available on Beckett, using about 500 alphabetical entries, classified in various categories (17). All genres and main characters of Beckett’s oeuvre are assigned an entry, which provides a reference to the first edition of the works in French as well as in English. Beckett’s plays are also listed with their creation dates in France, England, and the United States, and their production dates in Germany when Beckett served as the director. Another category of entries deals with the great themes of the author’s work as well as the writers and artists who influenced him. The dictionary informs the reader about every aspect of Beckett’s monumental legacy, integrating the most recent critical responses. With the annexes,including a chronology,bibliography,and filmography,this dictionary constitutes an invaluable reference on Beckett’s life and works. The dictionary is comprehensive in scope, and the entries were carefully selected to facilitate research. They are succinct and to the point while providing more details when warranted. The necessary selection process does exclude other topics, but their content is skillfully subsumed under other entries, without unnecessary repetition or overlap. This allows the reader to access the information through a well-organized and controlled yet supple framework. Bowie State University (MD) Évelyne Bonhomme Hurley, Erin. National Performance: Representing Quebec from Expo 67 to Céline Dion. Toronto: UP of Toronto, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4426-4095-5. Pp. 244. $45 Can. This ground-breaking study of the ways in which theatrical and cultural performances may be perceived as “national” is well-suited for a critical collection...