On authorship in Samuel Beckett’s prose

This study aims at building a reflection on the notion of authorship in Samuel Beckett’s work, with a main focus on his short prose from the 60s and 70s. Thereunto, supported by the writings of Maurice Blanchot, S. E. Gontarski, João Adolfo Hansen and Hugh Kenner, we draw a route that starts with the Beckettian post-war trilogy, going through the subsequent productions that culminate in the short pieces outlined by the author after the publishing of How It Is (1961). As we take the path run by the Irish writer in his deal with failure (a path full of mud and light-grey-dark oscillations), we experience the rise of a paradoxical impression: the more severe are Beckett’s attacks against the shapes of the I, testifying the dilution of identity, more accurate become the shapes surrounding the idea of “author” that surmounts the whole of his literary project