Beckett Reads the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Three myths about Beckett’s university education and subsequent reading underlie and (I believe) distort a great deal of criticism of his work:

• 1. that at Trinity College Dublin, as an Honors student in Modern Literature, focusing on French and Italian, Beckett would have studied little or no English literature;

• 2. that in turning away in 1938 from his native Ireland and, after the war, in rejecting his native language, Beckett turned his back also on English literature; and

• 3. that in order to become a writer of poems, plays, and novels, Beckett had in a sense to reject the scholarly learning, methodology, and style he had learned at Trinity.

Generally speaking, the romantic artist is very much concerned with Time and aware of the importance of memory in inspiration….

Samuel Beckett¹