Beckett's Molloy, the Promise of Youth, and the Postwar. Issue 3 (August 2021)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Beckett's Molloy, the Promise of Youth, and the Postwar. Issue 3 (August 2021)
- Main Title:
- Beckett's Molloy, the Promise of Youth, and the Postwar
- Authors:
- Ross, Stephen
- Abstract:
- Abstract : This paper argues that Samuel Beckett's Molloy charts the historical transition of the postwar moment in generational terms – terms that themselves had real historical significance in the years immediately following the Allied victory in World War II – ultimately, and uncharacteristically, advancing a youthful figure of promise in young Jacques Moran, Jr. Though Beckett is much more commonly read as an allegorist of existential ambivalence – if not despair – I contend that his first postwar novel must properly be understood as staging history in its confused, agonistic, and frustrating family dynamics. Beckett's rendering of authority, history, and hierarchy in terms of perversion, queerness, and sterility ultimately preserves a futurity centred not precisely on the child per se, but on the emergent figure of the adolescent – the teenager, even, I will venture to claim – avant la lettre : Jacques Moran, Jr.
- Is Part Of:
- Modernist cultures. Volume 16:Issue 3(2021)
- Journal:
- Modernist cultures
- Issue:
- Volume 16:Issue 3(2021)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 16, Issue 3 (2021)
- Year:
- 2021
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 3
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2021-0016-0003-0000
- Page Start:
- 385
- Page End:
- 407
- Publication Date:
- 2021-08
- Subjects:
- Teenager -- generational tension -- post-war -- family -- history
Arts, Modern -- Periodicals
Civilization, Modern -- Periodicals
Modernism (Aesthetics) -- Periodicals
700.904 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/mod ↗
http://www.euppublishing.com/journals ↗
http://www.js-modcult.bham.ac.uk ↗ - DOI:
- 10.3366/mod.2021.0340 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 2041-1022
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 20722.xml