Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image

Anthony UHLMANN, Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 198 p.
ISBN-13 9780521865203)


SUMMARY

Beckett often made use of images from the visual arts and readapted them, staging them in his plays, or using them in his fiction. Anthony Uhlmann sets out to explain how an image differs from other terms, like 'metaphor' or 'representation', and, in the process, to analyse Beckett's use of images borrowed from philosophy and aesthetics. This is the first study to carefully examine Beckett's thoughts on the image in his literary works and his extensive notes to the philosopher Arnold Geulincx. Uhlmann considers how images might allow one kind of interaction between philosophy and literature, and how Beckett makes use of images which are borrowed from, or drawn into dialogue with, philosophical images from Geulincx, Berkeley, Bergson, and the ancient Stoics. Uhlmann's reading of Beckett's aesthetic and philosophical interests provides a revolutionary new reading of the importance of the image in his work.


CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Representation and presentation: Deleuze, Bergson, Peirce and 'the image'

2. Beckett's aesthetic writings and 'the image'

3. Relation and nonrelation

4. The philosophical imaginary

5. Cogito Nescio

6. Beckett, Berkeley, Bergson, film: the intuition image

7. The ancient Stoics and the ontological image

Conclusion

Works cited.