Trapped in Thought: A Study of the Beckettian Mentality

Éric P. LEVY, Trapped in Thought: A Study of the Beckettian Mentality, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2007, 200 p.
ISBN13 9780815631026
ISBN10 0815631022


SUMMARY

Eric P. Levy’s book investigates the mentality or attitude of cognitive apprehension expressed in Beckettian texts. Primary areas of concern include how the Beckettian attitude began, what concepts it invents or transforms to sustain its mode of thought, how the mentality wards off factors which would refute or heal it, and, most paradoxical of all, why this mentality ultimately reduces the mind to an estranged source of thought, continuously repudiated by its own awareness. The study uncovers the strategies by which experience is evacuated of all content but that consistent with the attitude registering it.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric P. Levy is associate professor in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is the author of Beckett and the Voice of Species: A Study of the Prose Fiction.