Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body

Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body is a study of the representation of the body in Samuel Beckett's work (both novel and plays), specifically focused on the 'prosthetic' aspects of the organs and senses. Referring to the indeterminate border between the body and material objects, inside and outside, self and other, the concept of prosthesis is gaining weight in contemporary critical discourses. While making use of the theoretical potential of this concept, Tajiri attempts to highlight palpably physical aspects of the Beckettian body. In the process Beckett's work is newly situated in the broad cultural context of modernism in which the impact of new media and technologies was profoundly registered. As a whole, a comprehensive perspective is given on such diverse topics as the mechanisation of the body, the foregrounding of the bodily boundaries and orfices, synaesthesia, the camera eye and the mechanically reproduced voice.