Juxtaposition Through Sundering: Beckett’s Exilic Body

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