Juxtaposition Through Sundering: Beckett’s Exilic Body

2025/12/28 by Spence, Barry Allen

paper · doi:10.13136/ma4zsq38

Abstract

This essay examines Samuel Beckett’s spatialisation of concepts in his one cinematic work Film and applies this to a consideration of his use of the principle of juxtaposition and, relatedly, the expressive technique of parataxis in a range of post-War dramatic works. It argues that these dominant structural and stylistic modes undergird the focus on “poverty, failure, exile and loss” that Beckett articulated after his self-revelation in Foxrock, Dublin in 1945. KEYWORDS: juxtaposition; parataxis; exile; Film; Samuel Beckett

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