Featuring the latest research findings and exploring the fascinating interplay of modernist authors and intellectual luminaries, from Beckett and Kafka to Derrida and Adorno, this bold new collection of essays gives students a deeper grasp of key texts in modernist literature.

• Provides a wealth of fresh perspectives on canonical modernist texts, featuring the latest research data
• Adopts an original and creative thematic approach to the subject, with concepts such as race, law, gender, class, time, and ideology forming the structure of the collection
• Explores current and ongoing debates on the links between the aesthetics and praxis of authors and modernist theoreticians
• Reveals the profound ways in which modernist authors have influenced key thinkers, and vice versa

Jean-Michel Rabaté is Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Co-founder and curator of the Slought Foundation, which supports initiatives at the nexus of cultural and socio-political change, he has authored and edited more than thirty volumes on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, and philosophy. His recent books include 1913: The Cradle of Modernism (2007), The Ethic of the Lie (2008) and Étant Donnés: 1) L’Art, 2) Le Crime (2010). The current president of the Samuel Beckett Society, he is working on books on psychoanalysis and literature, the future of literary theory and Samuel Beckett.