Beckett’s Eighteenth Century

Beckett's Eighteenth Century is the first book-length study ofSamuel Beckett's affinity with the British eighteenth century andof the influence of its writers on his work. Reading Swift, Pope,Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Johnson, Gray, and other writers of thisperiod, this study demonstrates how he was not only influenced bythem but interprets them for us in a quite modern way. Beckett'suniqueness is not questioned here, but this uniqueness is shown,paradoxically, to have its roots at least in part in his nativeliterature of two centuries ago.