Samuel Beckett between “Europe” and “Ireland”

Abstract

This paper focuses on the problems of binary thinking found in Beckett studies: the binary of Europe and Ireland and its concomitant binary of the modern and traditional. After briefly outlining the genealogy of the Irish-or-European Beckett criticism, I suggest three fields of research (Beckett’s relationship with the Irish Literary Revival, the problem of Irishness and the Irish context of modernism/ modernity) in which the binary opposition of Europe and Ireland and of modernity and tradition can be problematized more fruitfully.