Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett
- Roberta Cauchi Santoro,
This book challenges critical approaches that argue for Giacomo Leopardi’s and Samuel Beckett’s pessimism and nihilism. Such approaches stem from the quotation of Leopardi in Beckett’s monograph Proust, as part of a discussion about the removal of desire. Nonetheless, in contrast to ataraxia as a form of ablation of desire, the desire of and for the Other is here presented as central in the two authors’ oeuvres. Desire in Leopardi and Beckett is read as lying at the cusp between the theories of Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, a desire that splits as much as it moulds the subject when called to address the Other (inspiring what Levinas terms ‘infinity’ as opposed to ‘totality,’ an infinity pitted against the nothingness crucial to pessimist and nihilist readings).
- DOI: 10.36253/978-88-6453-406-0
- Series: Studi e saggi
- Scientific Board: Studi di italianistica moderna e contemporanea nel mondo anglofono / Studies in Modern and Contemporary Italianistica in the Anglophone World
- Language: English
- Subjects: Literature Anglo-American Literature
University of Guelph, Canada - ORCID: 0000-0002-6703-0349
- Publication Year: 2016
- Pages: 176
- eISBN: 978-88-6453-406-0
- Content License: CC BY 4.0
- © 2016 Author(s)
- Publication Year: 2016
- Pages: 176
- ISBN: 978-88-6453-405-3
- Content License: CC BY 4.0
- © 2016 Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Book Title
Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett
Authors
Roberta Cauchi Santoro
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
176
Publication Year
2016
Copyright Information
© 2016 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-6453-406-0
ISBN Print
978-88-6453-405-3
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-6453-406-0
eISBN (epub)
978-88-6453-407-7
eISBN (xml)
978-88-9273-231-5
Series Title
Studi e saggi
Series ISSN
2704-6478
Series E-ISSN
2704-5919
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