Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians

Hugh Kenner

Jan 2005 · Dalkey Archive Press

About this ebook

An enlightening study of three writers, Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians begins with an explanation of the effect of the printing press on books. The "book as book" has been removed from the oral tradition by such features as prefaces, footnotes, and indexes. Books have become voiceless in some sense--they are to be read silently, not recited aloud. How this mechanical change affected the possibilities of fiction is Kenner's subject. Each of the three featured authors approached this situation in a unique, yet connected way: Flaubert as the "Comedian of the Enlightenment," categorizing man's intellectual follies; Joyce as the "Comedian of the Inventory," with his meticulously constructed lists; and Beckett as the "Comedian of the Impasse," eliminating facts and writing novels about a man alone writing.

About the author

Hugh Kenner (1923-2003) was one of America's great literary critics. He wrote on a range of subjects that includes Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, and geodesic domes. As Bruce Bawer wrote in Bookforum, the late Guy Davenport (1927-2005) left behind an oeuvre that is one long lesson in the history of civilization, and to read any part of it story, essay, or translation is to be enthralled by his unflagging intellectual energy and engagement." His books include The Geography of the Imagination, The Death of Picasso, Herakleitos and Diogenes, A Table of Green Fields, The Cardiff Team, DaVinci's Bicycle, and many more."