Samuel Beckett: The Expressive Dilemma

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In this detailed study of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, Lawrence Miller traces Beckett’s attempt to voice the expressive dilemma that is posed by the assumptions of modernist art and art criticism. A preliminary examination of Beckett’s critical writings on literature and painting reveals a growing suspicion of modernist ambitions; it is the trilogy of novels, however, which represents Beckett’s most sustained rejection of the ‚feasible‘ aspirations of an expressive theory of art.