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Beckett and Broadcasting was a groundbreaking study of Beckett and the media when it appeared in 1976. Originally a doctoral dissertation defended at Åbo Akademi University (Finland), it has long been out of print. It has established itself as a standard work in the field. Highly responsive to the rich texture of Beckett’s media writings, it also contains scrupulous and comprehensive research into their broadcast history.
Fifty years after the first appearance of the dissertation, the Nobel laureate’s media corpus is no longer viewed as marginal but as 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 he found 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 on Beckett’s radio work has widened.
Aspects of this kind are covered in a substantial new introduction to this 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.
“This is an extremely valuable study of an important body of the work of Samuel Beckett [...] a work of considerable scope and astonishing maturity and assurance [...] will, I am certain, prove of lasting value to future generations of researchers.” —Martin Esslin, external examiner’s report to Åbo Akademi University (1976)
“Clas Zilliacus’s groundbreaking Beckett and Broadcasting (1976), now almost 40 years old – is it possible? – still stands as the definitive study of the radio plays.” —Linda Ben-Zvi, Journal of Beckett Studies (2014)
“[...] virtually all subsequent commentary on the subject stands either explicitly or implicitly in Zilliacus’s shadow.” —John Pilling in Addyman et al. (eds.), Samuel Beckett and BBC Radio (2017)
“[...] his monumental study Beckett and Broadcasting.” —Olga Beloborodova and Pim Verhulst in Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (2020)
Clas Zilliacus is professor emeritus of Comparative Literature at Åbo Akademi University, Finland.
Acknowledgements; Second Thoughts; Into Radio; Th’ Incorporal Air; Exploring Radio; Laws of Parsimony; Precision in Execution; From Narrowcast to Broadcast Beckett: A German Postlude; Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study of the Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television; Afterword by Galina Kiryushina; Index