Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This is the first full-length study of the relevance of the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) to the works of Samuel Beckett (1906–89). This book identifies Sadean intertext and motifs in Beckett’s writing, and provides novel ways to understand his interest in Sade, in whose works he found a world of discourses nourished by and revolting against key intellectual traditions that had shaped the Enlightenment and from which Modernism would later emerge. The study’s broad chronological structure isolates salient themes within each period of Beckett’s writing while addressing the evolution of his style and aesthetics over time. Chapter 1 (1920s–1940s) traces Beckett’s first encounters with Sade (through such authors as Guillaume Apollinaire, Mario Praz, Marcel Proust) and their resonances with his intellectual and artistic preoccupations, particularly his satirical reception of Enlightenment rationalism and his aesthetic interest in sexuality and disgust. Chapter 2 (1940s–1950s) explores Beckett’s reception of psychoanalytic theory as a terrain of interaction with Sade, drawing on Freud’s theories on ‘anal-sadism’ as recorded by Beckett in his unpublished notes. Chapter 3 provides a comparative study of Beckett’s Comment c’est (1961) and Sade’s Les 120 journées de Sodome (written in 1785), arguing for a Sadean impact on the form, themes, and aesthetics of Beckett’s text. Chapter 4 examines Sade’s continued relevance to Beckett throughout the evolution of his style and aesthetics after 1961. It discusses the recurrent theme of ritualized torture and its linguistic and philosophical implications in Beckett’s ‘torture pieces’, and also draws parallels with ‘noir’ aesthetics and other modernists such as Franz Kafka.</jats:p>