Abstract
This essay revisits Samuel Beckett’s 1929 essay on Joyce ‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’ for the collection Our Exagmination Round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress as a way of reconsidering his knowledge and appropriation of both Dante and Giambattista Vico. Beckett’s essay is read as a pseudo-scholarly exercise which pays playful homage to Work in Progress through willfully misreading Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio and Commedia, as well as providing, paradoxically, critical insights into Vico’s Scienza nuova and Autobiografia. These poetic, essayistic and philosophical texts of the Italian canon are recast, refashioned and repurposed as structuring elements for Joyce. However, despite his deliberately tongue-in-cheek warning against ‘analogymongers’ at the essay’s outset, Beckett delivers one of the most protean readings of Vico and Dante, the ramifications of which extend well beyond Joyce. Beckett’s isolation and problemitization of the key Vichian notion of Providence is foregrounded here as an example of creative criticism and aligned with Vico’s articulation of Providence as an historical agent in the Scienza nuova.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Samuel Beckett’s Italian Modernisms |
| Subtitle of host publication | Tradition, Texts, Performance |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis |
| Pages | 75-90 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781040260074 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781032363899 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2024 |