All sturm and no drang Beckett and romanticism: Beckett at Reading 2006

This new issue of Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui contains three sections: Beckett and Romanticism, the conference proceedings of Beckett at Reading 2006, and finally a collection of miscellaneous essays. In the past few decades there have been scattered efforts to address the topic of Beckett and Romanticism, but it remains difficult to fathom his ambiguous and somewhat paradoxical attitude toward this period in literature, music and art history. Although far from being a comprehensive examination, the dossier on "Beckett and Romanticism" represents the first sustained attempt to give an impetus to the study of this complex theme. Presented here are contributions on Beckett's attitudes toward Romantic aesthetics in general, including notions such as the sublime, irony, failure, ruins, fragments, fancy, imagination, epitaphs, translation, unreachable horizons, the infinite, the infinitesimal and the unfinished, but also on Beckett's reading about the Romantic period, his affinity with specific Romantic artists and their influence on works such as Murphy, the trilogy, Krapp's Last Tape and All Strange Away. The second part of the current issue presents a selection of papers given at the Beckett at Reading 2006 conference in Reading, organised by the Beckett International Foundation to honour the writer's centenary. Reflecting the importance of the Beckett Foundation's Archive to scholars, many of these essays present new empirical research in the field of manuscript studies. Further areas of research are illuminated by other contributions which, together with the essays contained in the 'Free Space' section, show the importance and benefits of scholarly dialogue and cross-fertilization between different approaches in current Beckett Studies. Table of contents** Introduction** Beckett and Romanticism** Dirk Van HULLE: "Accursed Creator": Beckett, Romanticism and "the Modern Prometheus"** Paul LAWLEY: Failure and Tradition: Coleridge / Beckett ** Elizabeth BARRY: The Long View: Beckett, Johnson, Wordsworth and the Language of Epitaphs** Mark NIXON: Beckett and Romanticism in the 1930s** Chris ACKERLEY: Samuel Beckett and Anthropomorphic Insolence** Franz Michael MAIER: Two Versions of Nacht und Träume: What Franz Schubert Tells Us about a Favourite Song of Beckett** John BOLIN: The "irrational heart": Romantic Disillusionment in Murphy and The Sorrows of Young Werther** Andrew EASTHAM: Beckett's Sublime Ironies: The Trilogy, Krapp's Last Tape, and the Remainders of Romanticism** Michael Angelo RODRIGUEZ: Romantic Agony: Fancy and Imagination in Samuel Beckett's All Strange Away Beckett at Reading 2006** María José CARRERA: "En un lugar della mancha": Samuel Beckett's Reading of Don Quijote in the Whoroscope Notebook ** Friedhelm RATHJEN: Neitherways: Long Ways in Beckett's Shorts** John PILLING: From an Abandoned Work: "all the variants of the one"** Anthony CORDINGLEY: Beckett and "l'ordre naturel": The Universal Grammar of Comment c'est/How It Is** Marion FRIES-DIECKMANN: Beckett and the German Language: Text and Image ** Rónán MCDONALD: "What a male!": Triangularity, Desire and Precedence in "Before Play" and Play ** Sean LAWLOR: "Alba" and "Dortmunder": Signposting Paradise and the Balls-aching World** David A. HATCH: Samuel Beckett's "Che Sciagura" and the Subversion of Irish Moral Convention** Paul STEWART: A Rump Sexuality: The Recurrence of Defecating Horses in Beckett's Oeuvre** Gregory BYALA: Murphy, Order, Chaos** Maximilian de GAYNESFORD: Knowing How To Go On Ending** Karine GERMONI: The Theatre of Le Dépeupleur** Dirk Van HULLE / Mark NIXON: "Holo and unholo": The Beckett Digital Manuscript Project Free Space** Jackie BLACKMAN: Beckett Judaizing Beckett: "a Jew from Greenland" in Paris** Russell SMITH: "The acute and increasing anxiety of the relation itself": Beckett, the Author