9 research outputs found
Samuel Beckettâs Krappâs Last Tape: Remembering Kant, Forgetting Proust
This article draws on Samuel Beckettâs recently published letters
and archival scholarship to consider the place of Immanuel Kantâs
critical epistemology within Beckettâs early thinking and his subsequent
works. Beginning from Beckettâs engagement with Kantâs Critique
of Pure Reason, demonstrated by notes taken from Wilhelm
Windelbandâs A History of Philosophy between 1932 and 1933, excerpts
from Jules de Gaultierâs From Kant to Nietzsche in the
âWhoroscopeâ Notebook, and Beckettâs acquisition of Immanuel
Kants Werke in 1938, I offer a close analysis of the philosophical underpinnings
of Beckettâs parody of Proustâs Ă la recherche du temps
perdu in Krappâs Last Tape. The larger purpose of this article is to
argue that a critique of metaphysical thought can be found in Beckettâs
work and to demonstrate that Kantâs influence as a philosophical
source of this critique has been largely overlooked in Beckett criticism