Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Samuel Beckett
- First Published: 1951
- Type of Work: Absurdist narrative
- Time of Work: The indeterminate present
- Setting: A landscape, a room, and a void
- Principal Characters: Molloy, Jacques Moran, Malone, The Unnamable
- Genres: Long fiction, Absurdist literature
- Subjects: 1950’s, Self-discovery, Memory, Traveling or travelers, Philosophy or philosophers, Psychology or psychologists, Authors or writers, Art or artists, 1940’s, Paris, Death or dying, Existentialism, Old age or elderly people
The Novels
In order to describe and discuss these three novels, collectively referred to as The Trilogy, the reader must set aside all previous conceptions and expectations regarding the novel form, for, like no literature since James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), Samuel Beckett’s awesome postwar work expands the definition of epic literature beyond all recognizable boundaries. While the first-person narrator (whose name and “habits of mind” may change but who represents the author in ever-contracting modes of existence) may on the surface seem cogent and...
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