Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism : : Humility and Humiliation / / Rick de Villiers.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: de Villiers, Rick,
• MitwirkendeR: Gontarski, S. E.,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Other Becketts : OTBE
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.)

Explores the relation between humility and humiliation in the works of T. S. Eliot and Samuel BeckettOffers the first book-length comparative study of T. S. Eliot and Samuel BeckettDevelops a literary theory of humility and humiliation – concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theologyExplores the relation between negative affect, ethics and aestheticsHumility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation points to an affective state at the extreme end of shame. Yet a shared etymology links the words to lowliness and, further down, to the earth. As this study suggests, like the terms in question, T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett share an imperfect likeness. Between them is a common interest in states of abjection, shame and suffering – and possible responses to such states. Tracing the relation between negative affect, ethics, and aesthetics, Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism demonstrates how these two major modernists recuperate the affinity between humility and humiliation – concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Series Editor’s Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations and Conventions -- Introduction -- 1 Fat Fingers and Private Truths: Between Manners and Morals in Eeldrop and Appleplex -- 2 Pudenda of the Psyche: Embarrassment in More Pricks than Kicks -- 3 Mr Eliot’s Sermons and Sermonising: Participation, Good Will and Humility in Murder in the Cathedral -- 4 A Defence of Wretchedness: Molloy and Humiliation -- 5 Assuming the Double Part: Irony as Humility in East Coker -- 6 How It Is and the Syntax of Penury -- Conclusion: Humility’s Edges -- Bibliography -- Index