Call For Papers

Call for papers Samuel Beckett Today/aujourd’hui: Samuel Beckett in China

The School of French and Francophone Studies and the Institute of Literary Studies of the Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), in collaboration with the bilingual journal Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (Leiden, Holland: Brill), are organizing the conference

Samuel Beckett in China

The main aim of the conference is to take stock of the reception of Beckett in China. Its goal is to explore all aspects of the relationship between China, Chinese-speaking audiences and Beckett’s oeuvre, including the following key aspects:

(1) publication and editions of Beckett in China: contexts, dates, distribution, audiences, etc. 

(2) translations of Beckett in China: source texts, target language, choice of works, etc.

(3) performances of texts in China and/or in Chinese: directing, acting, styles, choice of works, contexts 

(4) critical literature on Beckett and his reception in China: trends, audiences, themes, approaches

(5) artistic or other work inspired by Beckett (in media, such as the visual arts or cinema, or other genres, like pastiche and parody)

The conference will be held in spring (May/June) or autumn (September/October) 2023. It will be a hybrid event, with a limited number of sessions taking place at the SISU in Shanghai. Should Covid restrictions limit movement, the conference will shift online. The three languages of the conference will be Chinese and the two languages in which Beckett published his work, French and English. Given the international nature of the conference, and the fact that a selection of the contributions will be published in the bilingual journal Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, the organisers encourage the use of English or French for presentations, if possible. 

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui will publish a special issue with a selection of peer-reviewed articles based on contributions to the conference. 

Please send paper proposals in English to m.engelberts[at]uva.nl before 7 December 2022.

Conference proposals must include an abstract of the proposed topic (300 words max.) and a short biographical note (150 words max.) that includes your current academic affiliation and email address.

Appel à contributions Samuel Beckett Today/aujourd’hui: Samuel Beckett en Chine

Le Département d’études françaises et francophones et l’Institut d’études littéraires de la Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) organisent, en collaboration avec la revue bilingue Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (éd. Brill, Leyde, Pays-Bas), un colloque intitulé

Samuel Beckett en Chine

Le colloque se propose de faire le point sur la réception de Beckett en Chine. Plutôt que d’envisager le rapport qu’on peut établir ou imaginer entre Beckett et tel ou tel pays, et telle ou telle culture, ce colloque préfère donner la priorité à la relation que les différents publics chinois ont pu entretenir avec l’œuvre de Beckett. Il s’intéresse donc notamment à :

(1) la publication et les différentes éditions de Beckett en Chine : contextes, dates, diffusion, publics etc. 

(2) la question de la traduction de Beckett en Chine : langue cible, langue source, choix des textes, etc.

(3) les mises en scène des textes de l’œuvre de Beckett en Chine ou par des Chinois

(4) la littérature critique sur Beckett et sa réception en général en Chine : tendances, publics, thématiques, diffusion

(5) les créations diverses inspirées par l’œuvre de Beckett (par exemple dans les arts visuels, dans le cinéma, ou encore des pastiches, parodies etc.)

Le colloque se tiendra au printemps (mai/juin) ou en automne (septembre/octobre) de l’année 2023. En fonction des conditions sanitaires du moment il se tiendra ou bien totalement en ligne, ou bien sera « hybride », la partie physique se tenant dans les locaux de l’université de SISU à Shanghai. Les trois langues du colloque seront le chinois, et les deux langues dans lesquelles Beckett a écrit son œuvre, l’anglais et le français. Vu le caractère international du colloque et la publication d’un choix de textes dans la revue bilingue Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, les organisateurs encouragent les contributions en anglais et en français, si possible.

La revue Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui envisage par ailleurs de publier dans un numéro spécial les contributions que le comité éditorial aura jugées les plus représentatives.

Les propositions de contribution en français sont à envoyer avant le 7 décembre 2022 à :

J.M.M.Houppermans[at]hum.leidenuniv.nl

Les propositions consisteront en un résumé du sujet envisagé (300 mots max.) ainsi qu’en une brève notice biographique (150 mots max.) indiquant l’éventuelle affiliation universitaire, et l’adresse électronique de l’auteur de la proposition. 

Call for papers Samuel Beckett Today/aujourd’hui

Seventy years ago, on 5 January 1953 at Paris’s Théâtre de Babylone, En attendant Godot was staged for the first time. Since then, hundreds if not thousands of productions have been seen the world over; scholars of literature and the theatre have tirelessly explored the play’s most pressing concerns, hidden details and unresolved questions. In that same year of 1953, Beckett published another work with les Éditions de Minuit, one that might initially have received less public acclaim, but which would come to occupy a defining position in his oeuvre: L’Innommable. This phenomenon is far from a coincidence, and this special issue of Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui is devoted to examining how these two works are at once very different but intimately related. Contributions may discuss one of these texts, both texts together, or indeed the place of one or both within the literary and/or theatrical landscape of their time, or beyond, or their functioning within culture more broadly. Propositions treating other texts by Beckett or other authors will be considered, provided that the link with these two works is made explicit. We welcome in particular approaches that take into consideration the evolution of critical, artistic or philosophical positions since the 1950s.

Please send propositions for your article (of no more that 300 words) to the editorial committee before 10 June 2022, together with a bibliographical note (max. 150 words). If your proposition is accepted you will be invited to send your finished article by 1 December 2022, for publication in 2023/2024. Full articles will pass through double blind peer review. The SBT/A style guide and other practical information about the journal can be found through our site at Brill or at the “Beckett Endpage”.

Please send propositions to these two addresses:

m.engelberts[at]uva.nl

J.M.M.Houppermans[at]hum.leidenuniv.nl

En attendant Godot et L’Innommable : 70 ans

Appel à contributions Samuel Beckett Today/aujourd’hui

Il y a soixante-dix ans la première représentation d’En attendant Godot eut lieu à Paris le 5 janvier au théâtre de Babylone. Depuis la pièce a connu des centaines si ce n’est des milliers de reprises dans le monde entier. La critique littéraire et théâtrale n’a jamais arrêté d’en fouiller les aspects évidents, secrets ou en perpétuel suspens. Cette même année 1953, Beckett publie chez Minuit une autre création qui séduit peut-être moins le grand public dans un premier moment mais qui s’avérera occuper une place déterminante dans son œuvre : c’est l’Innommable. Cette coïncidence qui n’est nullement le fruit du hasard nous a incités à nous servir de ce tremplin pour consacrer un numéro de la revue Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui au couple à la fois très différent et à certains égards intimement lié. Les contributions peuvent traiter d’un des textes, des deux textes ensemble ou bien s’adresser à la place de l’un ou des deux textes dans l’œuvre de Beckett, dans le paysage littéraire et/ou théâtral (de l’époque même ou plus tard), ou de leur fonctionnement dans la culture au sens plus large. Les propositions concernant principalement d’autres textes de Beckett ou d’autres auteurs seront également considérées, si le lien avec les deux œuvres de cet appel est explicité.  Les approches qui tiennent compte de l’évolution des positions critiques, artistiques ou philosophiques depuis les années 50 jusqu’à l’heure actuelle sont surtout les bienvenues. 

Nous vous invitons à soumettre vos propositions au comité rédactionnel avant le 10 juin 2022 (maximum 300 mots, avec brève notice biographique de 150 mots maximum). En cas d’acceptation (avis en juillet) nous vous demanderons de nous envoyer votre article terminé avant le premier décembre 2022 (publication prévue 2023/2024). Les articles définitifs feront l’objet de la procédure de lecture de la revue. Les indications pratiques et stylistiques pour les auteurs se trouvent sur le site des éditions Brill ainsi que sur la « Beckett Endpage ».

Propositions à envoyer à ces deux adresses :

m.engelberts[at]uva.nl

J.M.M.Houppermans[at]hum.leidenuniv.nl

International conference organized by the University of Bordeaux Montaigne, France, and the Samuel Beckett Society
28-29 May 2020
Bordeaux Montaigne University
Pessac, France

“Stepping down into the sexpit”: Sex and Gender in Samuel Beckett’s Work

The titles of Samuel Beckett's two early novels show a taste for salaciousness and provocation that did not disappear in later years, and led to his being expelled from the family home and censored in Ireland. If obscenity became more subdued afterwards, and if sexuality tended to disappear from an increasingly abstract universe, sex, of an often crude kind, is a recurring feature of the Beckettian text. As for sexuality, in its normative version, it is systematically thwarted by the powerlessness and horror of procreation displayed by Beckett’s male characters, whose sexual behaviour “deviates” from the heterosexual paradigm (anality, onanism).

Sex questions the relationship to the other, as a sexual partner and in its gendered dimension. But this relationship is not a straightforward one in Beckett. Before the trilogy, female characters are essentially derealized (either through idealization or belittling, see Mercier, Bryden, Ben-Zvi, McMullan), while male characters are devirilized (Bjørnerud). Moreover, the question of connection and autonomy, central to the fiction and even more to the theatre, is experienced in sexual encounters with particular acuteness. The promise of a union, or even of fusion with the other, stumbles against an impossibility that feeds the melancholy of many characters. Considering that the sexual act is both material and spiritual, it can be traumatic but is also a source of humour and comedy.

Finally, there are many passages in Beckett’s writing that play on the denial of sexual difference. Indeed the boundaries between men and women, homosexuality and heterosexuality are often porous (Roof) and this calls into question any notion of identity built on sexual orientation (Stewart). The original forms taken by the social and interpersonal relationships of the Beckettian characters, from the 1940s to the rotundal fictions of the 60s and 70s with the flow of desire that runs through them (Fraser), are thus echoed in many queer but also trans theories (Crawford). Beckett’s writing seems to resist “the regime of the normal” when queerness shakes social bonds (Bersani) as well as narrative logic and identity (Calvin).

With this in mind, we would like to take stock of the contributions of gender, queer, trans and sexuality studies in the field of Beckettian studies. What do they reveal about Beckettian aesthetics and ethics? Which textual politics are revealed? How are gender and sexuality problematized today on the world stage when Beckett texts are adapted?

These questions can be addressed along the following lines:

-Representations and politics of sexual identities

-Censorship, repression, pornography, obscenity, voyeurism, sadomasochism...

-Sex, gender and laughter / trauma

-Queer and trans imaginative worlds

-Beckett and feminism / masculinism

Please send abstracts (300 words), including title and short bio (100 words) to psardin@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr by October 30^th. Presentations will be 20 minutes long.

The official languages of the conference are French and English.

Co-organizers are Jean-Michel Gouvard (Bordeaux Montaigne Univ. French department), Pierre Katuszewski (Bordeaux Montaigne Univ. Theatre department), Stéphanie Ravez and Pascale Sardin (Bordeaux Montaigne Univ. English department).

International Conference
University of Reading (7-8 November 2019) 
“Sapienza” Università di Roma (May 2020) 

Beckett & Italy : “Old Chestnuts”, New Occasions 

Can’t conceive by what stretch of ingenuity my work could be placed under the sign of italianità… There are a number of Italian elements [in my work]… 
(SB to AJ Leventhal, 21 April 1958) 

Beckett and Italy. As a student at Trinity College Dublin, Beckett studied Italian language and literature, and cultivated them privately with Bianca Esposito, the signorina Adriana Ottolenghi of ‘Dante and the Lobster’. They discussed the writers on his syllabus: Machiavelli, Petrarca, Manzoni, Boccaccio and Tasso, to name a few. His most striking encounter was with Dante – he read the Commedia many times throughout his life – and he also discovered a particular affinity with Leopardi. As a student, he wrote essays on Carducci and D’Annunzio. He attempted translations of Dante into English in letters and notebooks, and wrote a curious dialogue in German based on Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. In 1930, he published translations into English of Montale’s poem ‘Delta’ and texts by Franchi and Comisso. For a good part of his formative years, Beckett really was, as Walter Draffin in Dream of Fair to Middling Women, an “Italianate Irishman”. His interest extended well beyond literature. For example, he read the philosophical investigations of Bruno, Campanella, Thomas Aquinas and Vico. Moreover, he was interested in Italian music, was fascinated by Italian art, and followed with curiosity the experiments of Neorealist cinema. Yet Beckett’s relation to Italian culture is far from unambiguous. For example, despite his knowledge of the language, Beckett’s involvement with the Italian translation of his work was negligible. Comments like the one quoted above, where, while denying the “italianità” of his work, he draws attention to “a number of Italian elements” in it, are a testament to both the ambiguity and the vitality of this relationship. These two conferences aim to re-assess the influence that Italian culture, literature, poetry, theatre, arts and cinema had on Beckett’s works, even beyond what he was willing to recognise. 

Italy and Beckett. When Godot was first performed in Italy in 1953, the first Italian-language production coming a year later, Beckett was greeted as a playwright who belonged to the Theatre of the Absurd. Meanwhile his prose was mostly ignored or disregarded as minor. Eventually, Beckett found his place in literature, art, and popular culture; it is significant, in this light, that Calvino turned to him, in the last years of his life, and looked positively at his minimalism in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Writers and artists felt – as they do today – the need to respond to the Beckett phenomenon, even if only to condemn his ‘literature without style’. Theatre directors welcomed his experiments and continue to propose innovative productions of his work. Critics have analysed him comparatively with writers like Pirandello, Levi and Gadda. More recently, much attention has been paid to the ties between Beckett’s writing and the philosophy of Agamben. In more general terms, there is room to investigate the way Beckett can help the exploration of the new avenues opened by the so-called ‘Italian Theory’, and, conversely, how the conceptual tools offered by this trend of thought can shed a different light on Beckett’s work. The recent publication of the Italian translation of Beckett’s letters seems to align with this continued Italian interest in Beckett. On the other hand, the fact that it is still difficult to find his work in bookshops, confirms the ambiguity of Beckett’s position in Italian culture. Each of these conferences aims to reconsider the impact of Beckett’s work on Italian culture. 

For the conference at Reading, we encourage submissions focused on, but not limited to, the followings areas: 

• Beckett and Italian culture (literature, philosophy, poetry, art, cinema, music, science, theatre, radio); 

• Beckett, Italian Philosophy, and ‘Italian Theory’; 

• Beckett, Italian Language, and Translation; 

• Beckett, Italian Publishing Houses and Market; 

• Beckett and Italian Criticism; 

• Beckett and Italian Popular Culture; 

• Beckett and Italian Theatre; 

• Beckett, Italy and Poetry; 

• Beckett and Italian Arts; 

• Beckett and Italian Politics, and Bio-politics. 

Confirmed Keynotes (Reading): 

Prof. David Houston Jones (University of Exeter) 

Dr. Rossana Sebellin (University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’) 

Prof. Mariacristina Cavecchi (University of Milan) 

Dr Pim Verhulst (University of Antwerp) 

Further information about keynotes will be announced soon. 

Submission of proposal: 

For the conference in Reading, please send anonymised abstracts, in English, of 300–500 words to beckettanditaly@gmail.com with a separate short bio of no more than 150 words by 16 June 2019. 

For more information, please email beckettanditaly@gmail.com or visit barpgroup.wordpress.com. 

A separate call for papers will be circulated for the conference in Rome after November 2019. 

Organisers: 

Dr Michela Bariselli (University of Reading) 

Antonio Gambacorta (University of Reading) 

Dr Davide Crosara (University of Rome, Sapienza) 

Prof. Mario Martino (University of Rome, Sapienza) 

International conference
University of Almería, Spain
9-11 May 2019

Samuel Beckett and Translation

Confirmed keynote speakers: Erika Tophoven and Marek Kedzierski

Although Samuel Beckett’s literary career started in the late 1920s, he only really achieved international acclaim with En attendant Godot (1952), which he soon translated into English, beginning a pattern that would be repeated for the rest of his life. He also translated into French most of his writings in English, becoming, in the words of Nixon and Feldman (2009), the premier bilingual writer of the 20th Century. Very often he supervised the translation of his work done by others and it was frequent the consultation with the author by translators of his texts into a third language. At the same time, translation played a crucial part in his training as a writer; his translation of the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” section of Joyce’s Work in Progress, his work with Nancy Cunard’s Negro anthology, or his versions of surrealist poems in the early 1930s enabled him to develop the necessary skills to resolve the intricacies of linguistic expression that he would put into practice in his mature period. In times of necessity he even turned to translation to increase his income, as happened with the Anthology of Mexican Poetry in the early 1950s. However much he loathed translation, he never stopped translating, and it is the aim of this conference to raise questions about the role of translation in his literary production: What are the differences between the English and the French originals written and translated by Beckett? How does a Beckett text change when rendered into a third language? What strategies do translators employ to maintain the precision sought by the author in the original version? How does a text written by Beckett sound in other languages? We would like to create a forum of debate in order to find answers to these and other questions related to this emerging field of research in Beckett Studies.

Topics for papers may include:

-Beckett’s translations of other authors.

-Beckett’s self-translations into English or French: differences, losses and gains.

-Beckett’s collaboration with translators of his work into a third language.

-Beckett’s poetics of translation.

-Study of individual cases of Beckett’s translations into any language.

-Problems (and solutions) encountered by translators of Beckett’s work.

Please, send abstracts (300 words), including title and short bio (100 words) to sb-conf@ual.es by 31 December 2018. The official language of the conference is English, but a reduced number of papers in French and Spanish will also be accepted.

This conference is part of the research project SB-ST (code FFI2016-76477-P) funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and AEI/FEDER. Organizing committee chaired by José Francisco Fernández, University of Almería.

For more information: http://www2.ual.es/sb-st/

The Style of Samuel Beckett in the Epistolary Mirror 1929–1989
Lettres modernes – Minard, “Carrefour des Lettres modernes” series
(http://www.lettresmodernesminard.org)

This volume aims to study Samuel Beckett’s style in the mirror of his letters. Since 2009, four volumes of his letters have been published by Cambridge University Press: Volume I, 1929-1940 (2009); Volume II, 1941-1956 (2011); Volume III, 1957-1965 (2014) and Volume IV, 1966-1989 (2016). They have also been translated into French and published by Gallimard between 2014 and 2018. In spite of an originally imposing corpus, only a selection of around 2 500 (L1, xx) have been reproduced, but these letters give an idea of the evolution of the epistolary style of the author of Godot and Molloy, from the 1930s through to the 1980s. Written in English, French and, to a lesser degree, in German, the letters are addressed to numerous correspondents: friends (Tom MacGreevy, Ethna MacCarthy) and collaborators (Jérôme Lindon, Robert Pinget); close relations (Barbara Bray) or occasional correspondents, like David Hayman or Matti Megged.

Beckett’s literary style is overtly the subject of several missives, among which the famous ‘German Letter’ of 1937, where the young writer declares his desire to “tear apart” (L1, 518) “formal English”, and attack “grammar and style”. In other letters, it is his own epistolary style that Beckett comments on, in terms that somewhat recall the pejorative tone he almost systematically uses in relation to linguistic matters. Thus, the writer complains of his ‘shitty’ English that ‘pullulates’, whereas French offers him the advantage of ‘control’. He states: “I’m inclined as always in English to shit and pullulate – but there’s a play there all right I think – if I can restrain my native vulgarity.” (L3, 366).

If the question of Beckett’s style—understood as a singular idiolect—has incessantly drawn critics’ attention, following the author’s declarations in interviews or via the narrators of his own texts, these letters open new horizons for research. We therefore aim to study Samuel Beckett’s style in the epistolary mirror from the four following perspectives:

1. Definition and characterisation of Beckett’s epistolary style (What are its traits, its salient features?);

2. Diachronical study of stylistic variations, according to addressees, or the language used (Can we speak of a style common to both of Beckett’s major languages of writing? Can we, on the contrary, detect cultural specificities, knowing that Beckett described French as the “language of the infinitesimal” (L2, 189)?);

3. Stylistic affinities between his letters and his work (Are there—or not—constants, and shared stylistic units?);

4. How do Beckett’s metalinguistic statements in his letters shed light on his writing, or on that of other creators? Is the attention Beckett paid to “rhythms” (L3, 254) in language the same in his letters and in his works, or when he comments on the writing of others?

The notion of ‘style’ is to be envisaged in a linguistic and literary perspective from various angles, such as: vocabulary, enunciation, figures, registers, tonalities, sentence structure, etc.

To participate, proposals can be made in either English or French. A summary of around 300 words, accompanied by a bio-bibliography should be submitted before 15 November 2019. Acceptance by our scientific committee will be notified in January 2020. After acceptance of proposals, the completed texts (30 000 signs, including spaces) should be handed in by 15 April 2020. After evaluation, and return to the authors in June 2020, the final articles are to be handed in by 1^st September 2020. Publication is planned for the first semester of 2021.

Correspondence should be addressed simultaneously to the volume editors:

Karine Germoni: karine.germoni@sorbonne-universite.fr

Pascale Sardin: Pascale.Sardin@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr

Llewellyn Brown: llewbrown@orange.fr