The latest title in Cambridge University Press Elements in Beckett Studies series has just been released. Carnivals of Ruin: Beckett, Ireland, and the Festival Form examines and contextualizes the long history of mounting festivals of Beckett’s work in the country of his birth. The summary suggests that the phenomenon of ‘festivalising’ Beckett in Ireland ‘might be characterised as a way of bringing him back home, as well as a way of returning him to the canonical fold’ and that this new work – he showed little interest in either during his later years, it need hardly be added’ and proposes to examine Beckett’s dissidence in the face of these imperatives of nation, home and the canon’ while also highlighting ‘the negative the nature of the festival form and to critique the festivalisation of culture’.
The author, Trish McTighe, is well-known in Beckett sudies and in wider drama research circles and lectures at Queen’s University, Belfast. She has published widely in the field and also co-ordinates the Samuel Beckett working group at the ISTR. Apart from her many book chapters, journal articles and conference papers, Trish is the author of the 2013 monograph The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett’s Drama.
It is worth noting that this work in the Elements series will be available to download free of charge from 10 to 24 January 2023 from here.
The Samuel Beckett Society 