Beckett and Broadcasting

This reprint of Beckett and Broadcasting revives a foundational 1976 dissertation that pioneered the study of Samuel Beckett’s radio and television works, now reassessed as central to his canon, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting fifty years of scholarship.

Beckett and Broadcasting: On Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television reprints a doctoral dissertation presented at Åbo Akademi University in Finland in 1976 and published in the Acta Academiae Aboensis series of the university. It has secured a place as a standard reference in the field but has long been out of print.
This study appeared at a stage when Beckett’s main interest in writing for the media had focused on radio. It combines close and extensive textual analysis with contextual sensitivity to the special qualities of the broadcast media. Zilliacus shows a thorough familiarity with the conditions of radio production. A close analysis both of manuscript stages of the media works and of productions and their reception made this a pioneering achievement in the field of Beckett and broadcast media, which was a somewhat slighted part of the œuvre at the time. The groundwork of the study still holds.
Fifty years after the first appearance of the dissertation, titled Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study of the Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television, the Nobel laureate’s media work is no longer viewed as a marginal part of an expanding work. It is an integral part of a complete classical canon. Scholars interrogate it not only as a case of Beckett testing new techniques but also as ways of probing means of oral delivery, of obfuscating the origin of voices, of disembodiment. Apart from that, media work for Beckett offered editability, perfectibility, varnishing. In retrospect, the perspective has widened.
Aspects of this kind are covered in a substantial new introduction to this dissertation reprint. It comments on the state of the art in Beckett and radio studies, and it reaps the benefit of hindsight offered by half a century of scholarship. The book includes an afterword by Galina Kiryushina, specialist in Beckett and intermediality.