SAMUEL BECKETT AND THE POSTCOLONIAL NOVEL Samuel Beckett has long been seen as a distinctly “apolitical” and “ahistorical” writer, but this reputation fails to do him justice. Placing Beckett’s novels in the context of the newly founded Irish Free State, Patrick Bixby explores for the ﬁrst time their confrontation with the legacies of both Irish nationalism and British imperialism. In doing so, he reveals Beckett’s ﬁction as a remarkable example of how post- colonial writing addresses the relationships between private conscious- ness and public life, as well as those between the novel form and a cultural environment including not only the literary tradition, but also political speeches, national monuments, and anthropological studies. With special attention to these relationships, the study dem- onstrates Beckett’s challenge to familiar narratives of personal identity and communal belonging, which makes his writing integral to under- standing the history of the novel and the fate of modernism, in addition to the emergence of postcolonial literature. patrick bixby is Assistant Professor of British Literature at Arizona State University. www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-11388-5 - Samuel Beckett and the Postcolonial Novel Patrick Bixby Frontmatter More information