Beckett’s dialogue with the arts (music, painting, digital media) has found a growing critical attention, from seminal comprehensive studies (Oppenheim 2000; Harvey, 1967, to name just two) to more recent contributions (Gontarski, ed., 2014; Lloyd, 2018). Research has progressively moved from a general inquiry on Beckett beyond the strictly literary to issues related to intermediality and embodiment (Maude, 2009; Tajiri, 2007), post humanism and technology (Boulter, 2019; Kirushina, Adar, Nixon eds, 2021), intersections with popular culture (Pattie and Stewart, eds., 2019). However, a specific analysis on Beckett’s relationship with Italian arts and poetry on one side–and on Italian artists’ response to Beckett’s oeuvre on the other–is still missing. The volume offers an original examination of Beckett’s presence on the contemporary Italian cultural scene, a stage where he became (and still is) the fulcrum of some of the most significant experimentations across different genres and media. The reader will look at him as an “Italian” artist, in constant dialogue with the most significant modern European cultural turns.

Davide Crosara (PhD, “Sapienza”) is Adjunct Professor of English at “Sapienza” Università di Roma. His main fields of interest are Shakespeare studies, Modernism, posthumanism and the interconnectedness between literature and science.

Mario Martino (PhD, Florence University) is Professor of English Literature at “Sapienza” Università di Roma. His research interests include Elizabethan and seventeenth-century lyric poetry, the Victorian novel, Modernism, Beckett, and the relationship between literature and science.

Contents: Introduction, Davide Crosara; Part One: Visual Encounters, I.1 Mark Byron, ‘The Pantheon at Rome or Certain Beehive Tombs’: Beckett’s Posthumous Architecture; I.2 Mariacristina Cavecchi, Some Notes on Beckett and Michelangelo; I.3 Davide Crosara, ‘C’est l’Image la Dernière’: Samuel Beckett and Gastone Novelli; Part Two: Radio and Opera, II.1 Yuri Chung, Beckett’s Neither, an ‘Anti-Opera’ in Rome; II.2 Pim Verhulst, Dante, Wartime Radio and the Italia Prize; Part Three: Poetic Voices, III.1 Mario Martino, Beckett the Troubadour; III.2 Will Davies, The Empty House: Watt’s Leopardi Traces; Part Four: Echoes. Translations, Reverberations; IV.1 Rossana Sebellin, Beckett Resonating in Italy. Which Text, Whose Voice?; IV.2 Mena Mitrano, Beckett After Language