There is an increasingly widespread sense that Europe is in crisis. Notions of a shared European identity and a common European culture appear to be losing their purchase. This crisis is often seen as a conflict between a cosmopolitan and a nationalist idea of Europe. The reality is, however, considerably more complex, as the long history of the idea of Europe reveals. In this book, Shane Weller explores that history from its origins in classical antiquity to the present day. Drawing on a wide range of sources, he demonstrates that, all too often, seemingly progressive ideas of Europe have been shaped by Eurocentric, culturally supremacist, and even racist assumptions. Seeking to break with this troubling pattern, Weller calls for an idea of Europe shaped by a spirit of self-critique and by an openness to those cultures that have for so long been dismissed as non-European.

Originally written in French and first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1957, Samuel Beckett's 'Endgame' is widely regarded as one of his most important works. This book, co-authored by Dirk Van Hulle and Shane Weller, is a comprehensive reference guide to the history of the text. The book includes: a complete descriptive catalogue of available relevant manuscripts, including French and English texts, alternative drafts and notebook pages; a critical reconstruction of the history of the text, from its genesis through the process of composition to its full publication history; and a detailed guide to exploring the manuscripts online at the Beckett Digital Manuscripts Project at www.beckettarchive.org. This volume is part of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (BDMP), a collaboration between the Centre for Manuscript Genetics (University of Antwerp, Belgium), the Beckett International Foundation (University of Reading, UK) and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre (University of Texas at Austin, USA), with the support of the Estate of Samuel Beckett.

This book charts the history of the concept of nihilism in some of the most important philosophers and literary theorists of the modern and postmodern periods, including Heidegger, Adorno, Blanchot, Derrida, and Vattimo.

Drawing on evidence from his published works, manuscripts, and correspondence, this book explores Samuel Beckett's engagement with the theme of cultural nationalism throughout his writing life, revealing the various ways in which he sought to challenge culturally nationalist conceptions of art and literature, while never embracing a cosmopolitan approach.

Originally published in French as 'L'Innommable' in 1953 and translated into English by the author himself, 'The Unnamable' is the third and final novel of Samuel Beckett's 'Trilogy'. This book, co-authored by Dirk Van Hulle and Shane Weller, is a comprehensive reference guide to the history of the text. The book includes: a complete descriptive catalogue of available relevant manuscripts, including French and English texts, alternative drafts and notebook pages; a critical reconstruction of the history of the history of the text, from its genesis through the process of composition to its full publication history; and a detailed guide to exploring the manuscripts online at the Beckett Digital Manuscripts Project at www.beckettarchive.org. This volume is part of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (BDMP), a collaboration between the Centre for Manuscript Genetics (University of Antwerp, Belgium), the Beckett International Foundation (University of Reading, UK) and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre (University of Texas at Austin, USA), with the support of the Estate of Samuel Beckett.

Through an analysis of the interrelated topics of translation, comedy, and gender in the works of Samuel Beckett, this book explores the strangely 'anethical' nature of his writing.

This book charts the history of a distinct strain of European literary modernism that emerged out of a radical re-engagement with late nineteenth-century language scepticism. Focusing first on the literary and philosophical strands of this language-sceptical tradition, the book proceeds to trace the various forms of linguistic negativism deployed by European writers in the interwar and post-war years, including Franz Kafka, Georges Bataille, Samuel Beckett, Maurice Blanchot, Paul Celan, and W. G. Sebald. Through close analyses of these and other writers' attempts to capture an 'unspeakable' experience, this book explores the remarkable literary attempt to deploy the negative potentialities of language in order to articulate an experience of what, shortly after the Second World War, Beckett described as a vision of 'humanity in ruins'.

Focusing on a wide range of philosophers and writers, from Nietzsche to Derrida and Flaubert to Borges, this book charts the history of the deployment of the concept of nihilism within the discourses of philosophical and aesthetic modernism and considers the similarities and differences between modernist and postmodernist approaches to nihilism.

Since the mid-1950s, when the works of Samuel Beckett began to attract sustained critical attention, commentators have tended either to dismiss his oeuvre as nihilist or defend it as anti-nihilist. Taking as its point of departure Nietzsche's description of nihilism as the 'uncanniest of all guests', this book calls this critical tradition into question, arguing that the relationship between Beckett's texts and nihilism is one that will always be missed by those who are simply for or against Beckett.