Bloomsbury Academic Samuel Beckett and the Second World War: Politics, Propaganda and a 'Universe Become Provisional' (Historicizing Modernism)

In the wake of the Second World War, Samuel Beckett wrote some of the most significant literary works of the 20th century. This is the first full-length historical study to examine the far-reaching impact of the war on Beckett’s creative and intellectual sensibilities.Drawing on a substantial body of archival material, including letters, manuscripts, diaries and interviews, as well as a wealth of historical sources, this book explores Beckett’s writing in a range of political contexts, from the racist dogma of Nazism and aggressive traditionalism of the Vichy regime to Irish neutrality censorship and the politics of recovery in the French Fourth Republic. Along the way, Samuel Beckett and the Second World War casts new light on Beckett’s political commitments and his concepts of history as they were formed during Europe’s darkest hour. Review [Beckett's] life between 1939 and 1945–6 has been well-documented ... but William Davies adds much detail, and his book is certain to become the standard work on the subject. But he has done far more than provide new information: he adds fresh strands to the narrative. His book explores, for instance, the issue of Vichy’s Révolution nationale and Beckett’s sarcastic depiction of the Pétain paradox as a ‘poor old misled man and hero of Verdun’ (p. 78). This is followed by a brilliant exposé of Beckett’s relationship to Irish neutrality and a fine analysis of his greatest poem ‘Saint-Lô’ (1946). --John Fletcher, Journal of European StudiesWilliam Davies’s Samuel Beckett and the Second World War is not only an excellent book; it is a necessary one―a book that puts to rest the notion, long operative in Beckett studies, that Beckett’s oblique fiction, drama, and poetry deal with large abstract philosophical questions rather than historical realities. Davies documents, step by step, the subtle and complex treatment, in Beckett’s writings, of the frightening politics of pre-war Nazi Germany and the mendacities of Vichy France, of life during the Resistance years, of his response to neutral Ireland, and finally to the postwar tension between Gaullist humanism and the Marxism of the intellectual Left, neither of which Beckett found palatable. Davies’s is revaluative criticism at its most enlightening. --Marjorie Perloff, author of The Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg EmpireWilliam Davies’ Samuel Beckett and the Second World War argues, persuasively, that Beckett’s mature work is set in the shadow of war; although the texts might not refer to it directly, WW2 and its aftermath are woven into the texture of Watt, Godot, and the Trilogy. Davies traces the impact that conflict had on the evolution of Beckett’s art, and its traces in the maimed, solitary figures in his theatre and prose. Davies makes a compelling case; that Beckett’s work is profoundly shaped by war, and its impact on our idea of the human. This study will be a crucial part of discussions on the relation between Beckett’s work and the tumultuous events through which he lived. --David Pattie, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts, University of Birmingham, UK About the Author William Davies is a research fellow at the University of Reading. With Helen Bailey, he is the editor of Beckett and Politics (2020). He is an English editor of LONGITUDINES magazine.