Dantes in Limbo

Introduction

“…Analysing the ways in which Dante appears in the Beckett oeuvre, I have argued that Dante is assumed as a source of literary and cultural authority while also participating in the texts' sceptical undermining of authority. 35 This point can be extended beyond Dante, and, as Last Soliloquy makes clear, applies to repetition, parody and 'caricature' of Beckett's own texts too. Last Soliloquy can be read both as a pared-down version of Beckett's late theatre, advertising an especially parodic take on the movement towards fi nishing, and as an exercise in accretion, where the textual lives of 'not', 'what not' and 'nothing' are collected, from Murphy to Watt, from Godot and Endgame to What Is the Word.…”