Approaches to Teaching Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Editor(s): June Schlueter, Enoch Brater
Pages: viii & 184 pp.
Published: 1991
ISBN: 9780873525428
"The subject range...is very broad--from biblical allusions...to echoes of the music hall."
Choice
The casebound edition of this title is out of print.
Waiting for Godot offers as much of a challenge in the classroom today as it did to its early audiences in the 1950s. It has become "the centerpiece of a range of college and university courses. Whatever the context and approach, the play continues to yield readings that richly contribute to the study of both drama and culture," write June Schlueter and Enoch Brater, the book's editors.
This volume, like others in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first, "Materials," gives editions and productions, readings for students, reference works, background and critical studies, and audiovisual resources. The second part, "Approaches," contains twenty essays that situate the play in the Beckett canon, explore what it does rather than what it means, discuss its absurdity, put it in the context of contemporary drama, interpret it from different critical perspectives, examine its relation to Charlie Chaplin, compare its French and English texts, and share the pedagogical insights obtained by a teacher who directed it in a maximum-security prison in Florida.
Table of Contents
Approaches to Teaching Beckett's Waiting for Godot
PART 1: MATERIALS
June Schlueter and Enoch Brater
Editions and Productions
Required and Recommended Student Readings
- The Instructor's Library
- Reference Materials
- Background Studies
- Critical Studies
Audiovisual Library
PART 2: APPROACHES
Introduction
June Schlueter
Prologue
Beckett and His Godot
Ruby Cohn
Introducing Godot
Waiting for Godot and the Principle of Uncertainty
William Hutchings
"Let's Contradict Each Other": Responding to Godot
Michael J. Collins
Teaching Godot from Life
Linda Ben-Zvi
Index
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