Displacement in the life and work of Samuel Beckett with Paul O’Hanrahan

Beckett Seminar by Paul O’Hanrahan for London Literary Salon, Sunday January 27 2019

It is with great pleasure that the London Literary Salon is able to host Paul O’Hanrahan. I have admired Paul’s work with Joyce for many years and have hungered for an opportunity to hear his work on Beckett. Hope you can join us for this Salon special!

Irish in the Distance: Place and Displacement in the life and work of Samuel Beckett
In this seminar Paul O’Hanrahan considers how Beckett’s life in Ireland shaped his work and how he experienced place as a form of displacement. Beckett left his native Ireland at the age of thirty-one to live in Paris: he went on to become a dramatist of world-wide fame and to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1989, so his life almost spans the century of which he has become a talisman. Although his work found new ways of representing universal themes of suffering and mortality, it continues to be informed by the personal and the particular. The seminar will discuss Beckett’s life and work using readings from the prose works and plays to provide a shared experience of the resonance of his writing.

Paul O’Hanrahan is an award-winning theatre practitioner and scholar who specialises in Irish literature, and, in particular James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. He has a PhD from the University of Liverpool on Berlin and memory in contemporary fiction; he also has a research MA from York on Joyce’s portrayal of the city.
He has devised theatrical events and guided tours based on Beckett’s life and works in Dublin and London. This year he completed a fifth summer season of literary walks based on Beckett’s birthplace in Foxrock, County Dublin. Artistic director of Balloonatics Theatre Company, he has presented Joycean street theatre in Dublin on Bloomsday, June 16th, since 1988.
An advocate of immersion in the literary experience, he aims to stimulate discussion by readings that bring out the poetry and drama in the written work.

To register: please use the Paypal button below to pay £30– this includes opening notes and some food & drink.

Twitter: @paulohanrahan