Dear all,
A new thread...
Recently I've become interested in tracing the connections
between Samuel Beckett and eighteenth-century literature. Beckett
spoke repeatedly in interviews of the influence of various c-18
authors on his own work, especially Johnson and Austen (he referred
to the latter as his 'dear Jane',, and claimed to have learnt a lot
from reading *Sense and Sensibility*). Beckett's fiction certainly
bears the dint of Austen's, I think - they have a common
concern with the miniature, and with compact and contracted spaces.
I was wondering if anyone else might have any thoughts on this issue,
or more generally on the diachronic impact of eighteenth-century
literature on that of the twentieth century? It's also interesting
that William Burroughs, clearly indebted to Beckett, also cited
Austen as an influence (!).
Colin Winborn
University of Leeds
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