Habit and spontaneity in Samuel Beckett's English fictions.

Abstract

In this study I will be analysing the way in which the contraries that Beckett calls habit and spontaneity are used in the fictions he wrote in English. In his discursive writings Beckett comments on human experience generally and on the experience of artists particularly in terms of these contraries. I will show that they can be seen as applicable to the people who populate Beckett's early fictions, and thus as illuminating the meaning of those fictions.