É. Wessler, La Littérature face à elle-même. L'Écriture spéculaire de Samuel Beckett - Other Literary Studies

French Literature Reviews - 2026

É. Wessler, La Littérature face à elle-même. L'Écriture spéculaire de Samuel Beckett
Other Literary Studies

Review published in Acta Fabula: "Beckett and Specular Writing" by Natacha Lafond.

Éric Wessler, La Littérature face à elle-même. L'Écriture spéculaire de Samuel Beckett

Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi, coll. "Faux Titre", no. 339, 2009, 461 pp.

  • ISBN: 978-90-420-2722-0 Paper
  • ISBN: 978-90-420-2723-7 E-Book
  • € 92 / US$ 138

Publisher's description:

What functions does Western man assign to literature? What legitimacy remains for literature and fiction in our world? To find out, one needs the radical approach of Samuel Beckett, whose oeuvre constitutes a patient and progressive stripping away of the very foundations of literature.

Through the study of self-reference, self-reflexivity, and everything that makes Beckett's writing a mirror-writing, La Littérature face à elle-même demonstrates that the author of Endgame brings back to the fore a question already raised by Dante, Cervantes, and the German Romantics, among others. Literature has never ceased to mirror, admire, and critique itself since its establishment as a system. Yet the autonomy of the literary field is an illusion, and an examination of Beckett's work—intensely self-absorbed though it is—allows us to define what is truly expressed and shown in specular writing: if not the world itself, then certainly something profoundly real…

Table of Contents:

References to Editions Used

Introduction

Part One: Milestones for a History of Specular Literature

  • Introduction
  • Chapter I: Beckett, Heir and Revealer of a Tradition of Specular Theatre
  • Chapter II: Beckett, Heir and Revealer of the Self-Reflexivity of Narrative Genres

Part Two: The Constitution of Literature as a Self-Referential System

  • Chapter III: Overview: Beckett and the Autonomy of Literature
  • Chapter IV: Beckett's Oeuvre and the Self-Referential Evolution of Literary Genres

Part Three: Beckett and the Specular Representation of the World and the Subject

  • Chapter V: Beckett and the Metaphysical Tradition of Self-Reflexivity: The Place of the World in Specular Literature.
  • Chapter VI: The Beckettian Subject in the Mirror of Writing

Part Four: Literature in the Mirror of Melancholy

  • Chapter VII: Self-Reflexivity and Traumatic Catastrophe
  • Chapter VIII: Self-Reference, Aporia, and Aphasia: The Paradoxical Adoption of Literature as Language
  • Chapter IX: Melancholy and Self-Reflexivity

Conclusion

Bibliography: Works and Articles Cited and Used

Index of Authors

Index of Works Cited

The concept of specular writing refers to the tendency of literary works to mirror, examine, and critique their own formal structures and existence. This tradition, which involves self-reference and self-reflexivity, has historical roots in the works of authors such as Dante, Cervantes, and the German Romantics. By positioning Beckett as an heir to these traditions, the study situates his work within a broader history of narrative and theatrical genres that have long grappled with the status of fiction and the perceived autonomy of the literary field.

Éric Wessler's La Littérature face à elle-même examines how Beckett’s writing functions as a system, addressing the metaphysical implications of self-reflexivity regarding the representation of the subject and the world. The study explores the intersection of these formal techniques with themes of melancholy, trauma, and linguistic aporia. Readers interested in the evolution of self-referential systems in literature and the philosophical dimensions of Beckett's writing may find this analysis relevant to their understanding of his place in the history of Western letters.