Skip to main content

Lucy Jeffery

University of Nottingham, English, Faculty Member

Mid Sweden University, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSV), Post-Doc

University of Reading, Department of English Literature, Alumna

Followers

100

Following

82

Public Views

Dr Lucy Jeffery's research focuses on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Ezra Pound, and Magda Szabó. She is the author of the monograph 'Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process' and co-editor of the special issue for Green Letters: 'A New Poetics of Space'.
Address: Budapest / UK

less

Central European University

Institute of History of Hungarian Academy of Sciences

University of Public Service

Juliane Debeusscher

University of Tromsø

Universität der Bundeswehr München

Mitrovits Miklós

Institute of History of Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Central European University

Márton Szarvas

Central European University

InterestsView All (8)

Uploads

Papers by Lucy Jeffery

OSA Visegrad Fellowship Report Circumventing censorship during the Kádár era: a case study of the Demszky circle

In the 1980s, Hungary’s samizdat scene operated as a multifaceted network. Each point in this net... more In the 1980s, Hungary’s samizdat scene operated as a multifaceted network. Each point in this network was connected by a common raison d’être: to circumvent censorship in order to experience the cultural and political benefits of freedom of expression. This report documents findings from the Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) in Budapest where I spent a two months as a Visegrad Fellow. Research from files relating to samizdat and underground intellectual activity during the late Kádár era suggests that samizdat culture creates an environment that can water the seeds of a sprouting political opposition. This report, therefore, revisits the production and distribution of samizdat at a time when freedom of expression is once again under threat.

Chapter 7 Beckett’s Words and Music ‘or some other trouble’: Vaguening on the Airwaves

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Aug 20, 2021

Introduction to Green Letters Special Issue

Green Letters, 2022

Introduction to vol. 26, issue 3 'A New Poetics of Space' for Green Letters.

Beckett, Imagination Dead Imagine

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2019

'A Metatopographic Reading of Magda Szabó's 'Abigail' as a Response to the Treaty of Trianon'

Clio, 2021

2020 marks the one hundredth anniversary of Trianon, which resulted in the loss of two thirds of ... more 2020 marks the one hundredth anniversary of Trianon, which resulted in the loss of two thirds of Hungary’s land. It also marks fifty years since the publication of Magda Szabó’s novel Abigail (1970), which was translated into English this year. Though these anniversaries may simply be serendipitous, Szabó’s exploration of how Trianon shaped generations of Hungarians is conveyed through what Jon Hegglund (2012) refers to as a text’s metatopographic narration. With reference to Hegglund’s reading of cartographic narratives and Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the right to the city, this article takes an ecocritical approach in its analysis of Szabó’s depiction of how Hungary turned from homeland into territory through its martial, educative, and cultural politics. By illustrating the ways in which Szabó draws on Hungarian literary traditions and myths, we argue that Abigail can be read as a geopolitical novel that comments on the lasting imprint of Trianon.

Palliative Care and the Dance of Death in Harold Pinter's 'Moonlight'

The Harold Pinter Review, 2021

As we live through a global pandemic, how do our experiences of healthcare and lockdown influence... more As we live through a global pandemic, how do our experiences of healthcare and lockdown influence our engagement with theatre? In what ways is COVID-19 raising concerns about the availability of palliative care? More specifically, how does the work of Harold Pinter help us to understand our relationship toward caretaking and caregiving? This article explores these questions through its engagement with Pinter's 1993 play Moonlight.

Magda Szabó: Finding Home in the Homeland in Post-1956 Hungary

SIC - Journal of Literature, Culture, and Literary Translation, Dec 12, 2020

In Iza’s Ballad, Magda Szabó writes about the lives of two doctors who meet and fall in love at u... more In Iza’s Ballad, Magda Szabó writes about the lives of two doctors who meet and fall in love at university. “Don’t get too involved with politics,” experienced Antal warns a seemingly ingénue Iza. To which she responds: “Politics will be my life as long as I live.” In this brief encounter, Szabó connects the predominant themes of her oeuvre: politics and life, or, to be more specific, Communism and the domestic. In its analysis of Iza’s Ballad (1963), Katalin Street (1969), and The Door (1987), this article illustrates how Szabó’s descriptions of the domestic convey the impact of Hungary’s troubled political history on the concept of the home/homeland. The article illustrates the ways in which Szabó contrasts the relatively comfortable years of Goulash Communism with the hardship endured during WWII, under Rákosi, and during the 1956 Revolution, to convey the lasting effects of the Soviet occupation on the notion of home.

Natasha Gordon in Conversation with Lucy Jeffery: 'It was around 7.27pm that suddenly diversity walked through the door'

ArtsPraxis, Volume 7 Issue 2b , 2020

Award-winning playwright Natasha Gordon talks to Lucy Jeffery about her experience as a Caribbean... more Award-winning playwright Natasha Gordon talks to Lucy Jeffery about her experience as a Caribbean-British actor and playwright whose debut play Nine Night (2018) made her the first black British female playwright to have a play staged in London’s West End. The discussion ranges from Gordon’s own experiences of gendered and racial injustices as a young actor to how these prejudices are evident in the audience demographic of theatres today. It focuses on Nine Night’s exploration of how second-generation, specifically Jamaican-British, immigrants experience tensions concerning identity, belonging, and displacement in the wake of the 2018 Windrush Scandal. As the conversation evaluates the importance of Gordon’s work and visibility on the National Theatre and West End stages, it contributes to the recent underrepresentation of black voices, a concern expressed in the widespread Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name protests that have taken place in America and the UK in 2020. The conversation, which took place at the University of Reading as part of the ‘Race and Performance Today’ series (organised by Jeffery and Matthew McFrederick), also responds to Michael Peters’s (2015) call to challenge the whiteness of curricula in British and American universities.

An Interview with Tim Parkinson

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2020

Ezra Pound and Constantin Brancusi: sculptural form and the struggle to ‘make it cohere’

Word & Image, 2020

This article takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to show the artistic importance of the ... more This article takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to show the artistic importance of the friendship between Ezra Pound and Constantin Brancusi. It refers to key moments in Pound’s late cantos that evidence his development of a specifically sculptural aesthetic technique. With reference to Pound’s critical writings on the visual arts as well as to his allusions to sculpture and the process of direct carving throughout The Cantos, Pound’s and Brancusi’s work is seen as exemplary of experiments in poetic and sculptural form during the first half of the twentieth century. More specifically, Pound’s invocation of ‘no slither’ and his reference to Brancusi’s Bird in Space (1924, etc.) in Canto CXVII are read as being connected to his struggle to ‘make it cohere’. While Harriet Zinnes and Rebecca Beasley have both analysed Pound’s work in relation to the visual arts, this article sees his interest in the work of Brancusi as something that not only influences the shape of his late cantos, but also is intrinsic to his fraught creative process and sculptural aesthetic.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 'An Old Hullo Out of the Dark': Radio Echoes between Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2020

Radio provided Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter with new ways of experimenting with voice, silenc... more Radio provided Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter with new ways of experimenting with voice, silence, and absence. As they maximised radio’s potential to explore the ephemerality of language and non-linear narratives, the works they created were concerned with the medium itself. On radio, Beckett’s silences and Pinter’s pauses create a heightened sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. Their medium-conscious works also provided them with a platform through which they could experiment with their shared frustration with the inaccuracies of language. The article explores Pinter’s interest in Beckett’s work by drawing on Pinter’s letters to Richard Seaver, Patrick Magee, and Mick Goldstein from the Harold Pinter Archive. It then shows how Pinter’s own work is intermedial in its experimentation with new technologies such as radio. By pointing to examples within Pinter’s Landscape (1968) that speak to moments in Beckett’s Embers (1959), the parallels between these writers in their use of radio are identified. Finally, the article suggests that Pinter’s work is not merely derivative of Beckett’s but demonstrates how the radio drama of both writers is underwritten by an intermedial creative process.

Lucy Jeffery Reviews Beckett’s 'Imagination Dead Imagine', directed by Michael Roth, performed by Quartet Nouveau

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2019

Theatre review

Pinter as Poet, Pinter as Politician

The Harold Pinter Review, 2020

Widely celebrated as one of the greatest playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century,... more Widely celebrated as one of the greatest playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century, the playwright Harold Pinter is rarely maligned. Pinter’s poetry, however, is often sidestepped, with critics generally regarding it as lacking the deft- ness of his drama. Following on from Basil Chiasson in The Late Harold Pinter: Political Dramatist, Poet and Activist (2017), this article focuses on Pinter’s often neglected poetic works. It reads Pinter’s poetry in the context of the Cold War, Gulf War, and Iraq War to unpick the political resonances within poems such as “Partners” (1985), “American Football” (1991), “Don’t Look” (1995), and “God Bless America” (2003). Through reference to Jean Baudrillard’s article “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place” (1991), this article examines Pinter’s poetry in light of what we now call “fake news.”

Beckett's Brush with Joan Mitchell: Painterly Techniques in ‘One Evening’

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2018

This paper explores Samuel Beckett's creative relationship with the painter, Joan Mitchell. Throu... more This paper explores Samuel Beckett's creative relationship with the painter, Joan Mitchell. Through an analysis of Beckett's short text ‘One Evening’ (1980) and Mitchell's painting Tondo (1991), it explores the influence these artists had on each other's work. By drawing comparisons between their aesthetic approaches to their respective medium, it suggests that Beckett's self-reflexive, ambiguous, and carefully coloured late text shares similarities with the work Mitchell was producing around the same time. It uses art historical scholarship and close textual analysis to show how, in some instances, their creative processes reflects that of Paul Cézanne. Beckett's late style is seen as not simply becoming darker, but, like Mitchell's canvases, fluctuates between light and dark, colour and monochrome. The paper proposes that through their considered use of colour both Beckett and Mitchell's work intensifies rather than alleviates the essential tension that drives their aesthetic thought.

Beckett Chamber Music Series – Words and Music, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2019

Lucy Jeffery Reviews Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art, eds. Robert Reginio, David Houston Jones and Katherine Weiss

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2018

Samuel Beckett's Use of Color in Company: Blue

Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2018

This article looks at Samuel Beckett's use of color in his late short prose text Company (1980). ... more This article looks at Samuel Beckett's use of color in his late short prose text Company (1980). In its reference to Beckett's "Olympic" notebook, it demonstrates how Beckett's writing process is not merely visual but is also highly dependent upon color in its creation of atmosphere and setting. Instead of seeing Beckett's later work as simply deracinated and monochromatic, it suggests that his prose evidences a painterly style. By analysing Company from an art historical perspective, the article claims that Beckett's use of blue is linked to his comments on paintings by Poussin and da Messina. Saint Augustine's writings on memory are also invoked to understand Beckett's use of color in connection with childhood recollections. The article argues for a reading of Company that uses color to create a self-reflexive narrative that avoids polarization between light and dark, hope and dejection.

Music in Samuel Beckett’s radio play Embers: ‘I shouldn’t be hearing that!’

The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media, 2018

This article explores how Samuel Beckett’s use of music in his 1957 radio play Embers is linked t... more This article explores how Samuel Beckett’s use of music in his 1957 radio play Embers is linked to our understanding of the experience of memory and storytelling. It reconsiders how Beckett’s use of the radio medium both informs and is informed by his lifelong interest in music. Beckett’s well-known attitudes towards storytelling – his struggle to express, interest in ambiguity, and resistance to neat conclusions – are revisited with close attention paid to his attempt to express the ineffable. The article argues that Beckett’s simultaneous need for and resistance to storytelling finds its voice in the impossibility of describing music. It suggests that this implicit tension is essential not only in terms of listening to Embers, but also becomes an increasingly central and knotty element of Beckett’s creative process. Hence, the article claims that Beckett can be read alongside twentieth-century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Paul Hindemith. In its use of Theodor Adorno and Vladimir Jankélévitch, the analysis employs musicological readings of Beckett’s radio play to demonstrate how Beckett’s use of music complicates, rather than facilitates, our experience of memory and storytelling.

Swansea University (7th September 2015): A Century On: Modernist Studies in Wales – The Inaugural MONC Conference

Conference report

Beckett Week at Reading: Beckett & Politics Conference, University of Reading, 3-4 November 2016, Lucy Jeffery

Conference report

OSA Visegrad Fellowship Report Circumventing censorship during the Kádár era: a case study of the Demszky circle

In the 1980s, Hungary’s samizdat scene operated as a multifaceted network. Each point in this net... more In the 1980s, Hungary’s samizdat scene operated as a multifaceted network. Each point in this network was connected by a common raison d’être: to circumvent censorship in order to experience the cultural and political benefits of freedom of expression. This report documents findings from the Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) in Budapest where I spent a two months as a Visegrad Fellow. Research from files relating to samizdat and underground intellectual activity during the late Kádár era suggests that samizdat culture creates an environment that can water the seeds of a sprouting political opposition. This report, therefore, revisits the production and distribution of samizdat at a time when freedom of expression is once again under threat.

Chapter 7 Beckett’s Words and Music ‘or some other trouble’: Vaguening on the Airwaves

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Aug 20, 2021

Introduction to Green Letters Special Issue

Green Letters, 2022

Introduction to vol. 26, issue 3 'A New Poetics of Space' for Green Letters.

Beckett, Imagination Dead Imagine

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2019

'A Metatopographic Reading of Magda Szabó's 'Abigail' as a Response to the Treaty of Trianon'

Clio, 2021

2020 marks the one hundredth anniversary of Trianon, which resulted in the loss of two thirds of ... more 2020 marks the one hundredth anniversary of Trianon, which resulted in the loss of two thirds of Hungary’s land. It also marks fifty years since the publication of Magda Szabó’s novel Abigail (1970), which was translated into English this year. Though these anniversaries may simply be serendipitous, Szabó’s exploration of how Trianon shaped generations of Hungarians is conveyed through what Jon Hegglund (2012) refers to as a text’s metatopographic narration. With reference to Hegglund’s reading of cartographic narratives and Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the right to the city, this article takes an ecocritical approach in its analysis of Szabó’s depiction of how Hungary turned from homeland into territory through its martial, educative, and cultural politics. By illustrating the ways in which Szabó draws on Hungarian literary traditions and myths, we argue that Abigail can be read as a geopolitical novel that comments on the lasting imprint of Trianon.

Palliative Care and the Dance of Death in Harold Pinter's 'Moonlight'

The Harold Pinter Review, 2021

As we live through a global pandemic, how do our experiences of healthcare and lockdown influence... more As we live through a global pandemic, how do our experiences of healthcare and lockdown influence our engagement with theatre? In what ways is COVID-19 raising concerns about the availability of palliative care? More specifically, how does the work of Harold Pinter help us to understand our relationship toward caretaking and caregiving? This article explores these questions through its engagement with Pinter's 1993 play Moonlight.

Magda Szabó: Finding Home in the Homeland in Post-1956 Hungary

SIC - Journal of Literature, Culture, and Literary Translation, Dec 12, 2020

In Iza’s Ballad, Magda Szabó writes about the lives of two doctors who meet and fall in love at u... more In Iza’s Ballad, Magda Szabó writes about the lives of two doctors who meet and fall in love at university. “Don’t get too involved with politics,” experienced Antal warns a seemingly ingénue Iza. To which she responds: “Politics will be my life as long as I live.” In this brief encounter, Szabó connects the predominant themes of her oeuvre: politics and life, or, to be more specific, Communism and the domestic. In its analysis of Iza’s Ballad (1963), Katalin Street (1969), and The Door (1987), this article illustrates how Szabó’s descriptions of the domestic convey the impact of Hungary’s troubled political history on the concept of the home/homeland. The article illustrates the ways in which Szabó contrasts the relatively comfortable years of Goulash Communism with the hardship endured during WWII, under Rákosi, and during the 1956 Revolution, to convey the lasting effects of the Soviet occupation on the notion of home.

Natasha Gordon in Conversation with Lucy Jeffery: 'It was around 7.27pm that suddenly diversity walked through the door'

ArtsPraxis, Volume 7 Issue 2b , 2020

Award-winning playwright Natasha Gordon talks to Lucy Jeffery about her experience as a Caribbean... more Award-winning playwright Natasha Gordon talks to Lucy Jeffery about her experience as a Caribbean-British actor and playwright whose debut play Nine Night (2018) made her the first black British female playwright to have a play staged in London’s West End. The discussion ranges from Gordon’s own experiences of gendered and racial injustices as a young actor to how these prejudices are evident in the audience demographic of theatres today. It focuses on Nine Night’s exploration of how second-generation, specifically Jamaican-British, immigrants experience tensions concerning identity, belonging, and displacement in the wake of the 2018 Windrush Scandal. As the conversation evaluates the importance of Gordon’s work and visibility on the National Theatre and West End stages, it contributes to the recent underrepresentation of black voices, a concern expressed in the widespread Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name protests that have taken place in America and the UK in 2020. The conversation, which took place at the University of Reading as part of the ‘Race and Performance Today’ series (organised by Jeffery and Matthew McFrederick), also responds to Michael Peters’s (2015) call to challenge the whiteness of curricula in British and American universities.

An Interview with Tim Parkinson

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2020

Ezra Pound and Constantin Brancusi: sculptural form and the struggle to ‘make it cohere’

Word & Image, 2020

This article takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to show the artistic importance of the ... more This article takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to show the artistic importance of the friendship between Ezra Pound and Constantin Brancusi. It refers to key moments in Pound’s late cantos that evidence his development of a specifically sculptural aesthetic technique. With reference to Pound’s critical writings on the visual arts as well as to his allusions to sculpture and the process of direct carving throughout The Cantos, Pound’s and Brancusi’s work is seen as exemplary of experiments in poetic and sculptural form during the first half of the twentieth century. More specifically, Pound’s invocation of ‘no slither’ and his reference to Brancusi’s Bird in Space (1924, etc.) in Canto CXVII are read as being connected to his struggle to ‘make it cohere’. While Harriet Zinnes and Rebecca Beasley have both analysed Pound’s work in relation to the visual arts, this article sees his interest in the work of Brancusi as something that not only influences the shape of his late cantos, but also is intrinsic to his fraught creative process and sculptural aesthetic.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 'An Old Hullo Out of the Dark': Radio Echoes between Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2020

Radio provided Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter with new ways of experimenting with voice, silenc... more Radio provided Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter with new ways of experimenting with voice, silence, and absence. As they maximised radio’s potential to explore the ephemerality of language and non-linear narratives, the works they created were concerned with the medium itself. On radio, Beckett’s silences and Pinter’s pauses create a heightened sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. Their medium-conscious works also provided them with a platform through which they could experiment with their shared frustration with the inaccuracies of language. The article explores Pinter’s interest in Beckett’s work by drawing on Pinter’s letters to Richard Seaver, Patrick Magee, and Mick Goldstein from the Harold Pinter Archive. It then shows how Pinter’s own work is intermedial in its experimentation with new technologies such as radio. By pointing to examples within Pinter’s Landscape (1968) that speak to moments in Beckett’s Embers (1959), the parallels between these writers in their use of radio are identified. Finally, the article suggests that Pinter’s work is not merely derivative of Beckett’s but demonstrates how the radio drama of both writers is underwritten by an intermedial creative process.

Lucy Jeffery Reviews Beckett’s 'Imagination Dead Imagine', directed by Michael Roth, performed by Quartet Nouveau

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2019

Theatre review

Pinter as Poet, Pinter as Politician

The Harold Pinter Review, 2020

Widely celebrated as one of the greatest playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century,... more Widely celebrated as one of the greatest playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century, the playwright Harold Pinter is rarely maligned. Pinter’s poetry, however, is often sidestepped, with critics generally regarding it as lacking the deft- ness of his drama. Following on from Basil Chiasson in The Late Harold Pinter: Political Dramatist, Poet and Activist (2017), this article focuses on Pinter’s often neglected poetic works. It reads Pinter’s poetry in the context of the Cold War, Gulf War, and Iraq War to unpick the political resonances within poems such as “Partners” (1985), “American Football” (1991), “Don’t Look” (1995), and “God Bless America” (2003). Through reference to Jean Baudrillard’s article “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place” (1991), this article examines Pinter’s poetry in light of what we now call “fake news.”

Beckett's Brush with Joan Mitchell: Painterly Techniques in ‘One Evening’

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2018

This paper explores Samuel Beckett's creative relationship with the painter, Joan Mitchell. Throu... more This paper explores Samuel Beckett's creative relationship with the painter, Joan Mitchell. Through an analysis of Beckett's short text ‘One Evening’ (1980) and Mitchell's painting Tondo (1991), it explores the influence these artists had on each other's work. By drawing comparisons between their aesthetic approaches to their respective medium, it suggests that Beckett's self-reflexive, ambiguous, and carefully coloured late text shares similarities with the work Mitchell was producing around the same time. It uses art historical scholarship and close textual analysis to show how, in some instances, their creative processes reflects that of Paul Cézanne. Beckett's late style is seen as not simply becoming darker, but, like Mitchell's canvases, fluctuates between light and dark, colour and monochrome. The paper proposes that through their considered use of colour both Beckett and Mitchell's work intensifies rather than alleviates the essential tension that drives their aesthetic thought.

Beckett Chamber Music Series – Words and Music, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2019

Lucy Jeffery Reviews Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art, eds. Robert Reginio, David Houston Jones and Katherine Weiss

Journal of Beckett Studies, 2018

Samuel Beckett's Use of Color in Company: Blue

Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2018

This article looks at Samuel Beckett's use of color in his late short prose text Company (1980). ... more This article looks at Samuel Beckett's use of color in his late short prose text Company (1980). In its reference to Beckett's "Olympic" notebook, it demonstrates how Beckett's writing process is not merely visual but is also highly dependent upon color in its creation of atmosphere and setting. Instead of seeing Beckett's later work as simply deracinated and monochromatic, it suggests that his prose evidences a painterly style. By analysing Company from an art historical perspective, the article claims that Beckett's use of blue is linked to his comments on paintings by Poussin and da Messina. Saint Augustine's writings on memory are also invoked to understand Beckett's use of color in connection with childhood recollections. The article argues for a reading of Company that uses color to create a self-reflexive narrative that avoids polarization between light and dark, hope and dejection.

Music in Samuel Beckett’s radio play Embers: ‘I shouldn’t be hearing that!’

The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media, 2018

This article explores how Samuel Beckett’s use of music in his 1957 radio play Embers is linked t... more This article explores how Samuel Beckett’s use of music in his 1957 radio play Embers is linked to our understanding of the experience of memory and storytelling. It reconsiders how Beckett’s use of the radio medium both informs and is informed by his lifelong interest in music. Beckett’s well-known attitudes towards storytelling – his struggle to express, interest in ambiguity, and resistance to neat conclusions – are revisited with close attention paid to his attempt to express the ineffable. The article argues that Beckett’s simultaneous need for and resistance to storytelling finds its voice in the impossibility of describing music. It suggests that this implicit tension is essential not only in terms of listening to Embers, but also becomes an increasingly central and knotty element of Beckett’s creative process. Hence, the article claims that Beckett can be read alongside twentieth-century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Paul Hindemith. In its use of Theodor Adorno and Vladimir Jankélévitch, the analysis employs musicological readings of Beckett’s radio play to demonstrate how Beckett’s use of music complicates, rather than facilitates, our experience of memory and storytelling.

Swansea University (7th September 2015): A Century On: Modernist Studies in Wales – The Inaugural MONC Conference

Conference report

Beckett Week at Reading: Beckett & Politics Conference, University of Reading, 3-4 November 2016, Lucy Jeffery

Conference report

Magda Szabó's 'Abigail' as a Response to the Treaty of Trianon

This paper looks at how Szabó explores the impact of the Treaty of Trianon on the idea of nationh... more This paper looks at how Szabó explores the impact of the Treaty of Trianon on the idea of nationhood in her novel Abigail (which Len Rix translated into English in 2020). It takes an ecocritical approach in its analysis of how Szabó’s narrative conveys Hungary’s geopolitical struggles during the months leading up to Germany’s occupation on 19 March 1944 and considers this in light of the contemporary political situation in Hungary.

Magda Szabó's 'The Door' and Goulash Communism

This paper looks at Szabó’s depiction of Hungary’s fraught recent political history, paying parti... more This paper looks at Szabó’s depiction of Hungary’s fraught recent political history, paying particular attention to the Goulash Communism years during the Kádár era. With particular focus on 'The Door' (trans. Len Rix), it considers how Szabó’s writing is an act of speaking out against the restraints that were imposed upon all non-Party conforming writers during the Soviet occupation.

'Going Green: An Ecocritical Reading of Beckett's Landscapes in the Novellas'

This paper explores Beckett's rupture of the subject-object relation and the failure of Realism i... more

'"[N]ot a sound": Samuel Beckett's influence on Harold Pinter's Landscape'

Exploration of Beckett's influence on Pinter's play (turned radio drama) 'Landscape', with partic... more

Words and Music 'or some other trouble'

Analysis of Beckett's collaboration with composer Morton Feldman for his radio play 'Words and Mu... more

‘Beckett and Colour: A Negative Optimism’

An exploration of Beckett's use of colour.

The ‘Dark lightens’ when in Company: Painterly Technique in Beckett’s Late Style

Beckett and Colour

Score to Text in 'Ghost Trio' and 'Nacht und Träume'.

Analysis of Beckett's creative process in two music based teleplays: 'Ghost Trio' and 'Nacht und ... more

Memory in Samuel Beckett and Geneviève Asse’s “blue celeste”.

Analysis of Beckett's short prose piece 'Lessness' that takes into consideration the significance... more

Cheese and Biscuits: Beckett’s Musical Monadology

Discussion of Marcel Mihalovici's score in Beckett's radio play 'Cascando'.

'Watt' about Samuel Beckett’s artistic legacy?

An analysis of Erskine's painting in light of Abstract Expressionism.

A note on Beckett’s decomposition

Musicological reading of Beckett's late teleplay 'Nacht und Träume'.

Review

The Harold Pinter Review , 2020

Reviewed Work: 'Beckett's Creatures: Art of Failure after the Holocaust' by Joseph Anderton

Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process

ibidem Verlag, 2021

This is the first monograph to analyse Beckett’s use of the visual arts, music, and broadcasting ... more This is the first monograph to analyse Beckett’s use of the visual arts, music, and broadcasting media through a transdisciplinary approach. It considers how Beckett’s complex and varied use of art, music, and media in a selection of his novels, radio plays, teleplays, and later short prose informs his creative process. Investigating specific instances where Beckett’s writing adopts musical or visual structures, Lucy Jeffery identifies instances of Beckett’s transdisciplinarity and considers how this approach to writing facilitates ways of expressing familiar Beckettian themes of abstraction, ambiguity, longing, and endlessness. With case studies spanning forty years, she evaluates Beckett’s stylistic shifts in relation to the cultural context, particularly the technological advancements and artistic movements, during which they were written. With new examples from Beckett’s notebooks, critical essays, and letters, Transdisciplinary Beckett evidences how the drastic changes that took place in the visual arts and in musical composition influenced Beckett and, in turn, were influenced by him. Transdisciplinary Beckett situates Beckett as a key figure not just in the literary marketplace but also in the fields of music, art, and broadcasting.

Collective Responsibility in Ingeborg Bachmann and Hans Werner Henze’s Radio Drama 'The Cicadas'

Radio Art and Music: Culture, Aesthetics, Politics , 2020

Ingeborg Bachmann’s three radio plays, written in the 1950s, each use music in innovative ways. H... more Ingeborg Bachmann’s three radio plays, written in the 1950s, each use music in innovative ways. Having worked as an editor and scriptwriter for the Allied radio station, Rot-Weiss-Rot, Bachmann was experienced in writing for radio by the time she wrote her own radio dramas. In these dramas, Bachmann experiments with sound as a means through which to convey and stretch the meaning of words and the rhythms of speech. Each of her radio plays explore the inhumanity of violence and loss of the self as they she experiments with with the literary representation of the inner world of dreams and non-linear narration. This chapter uses psychoanalytical and postcolonial approaches to unpick the role of music in Bachmann’s texts. It explores how in 'The Cicadas’ (1955), a reimagination of Plato’s myth of the cicadas, Bachmann’s collaboration with the composer Hans Werner Henze reinforces her interest in music. As well as exploring the futility of escapism, the trauma of the Second World War, and the threat of colonisation, Bachmann’s creative process and collaboration with Henze in this play becomes compositional. By analysing music’s function in this radio play, this chapter argues that Bachmann’s use of radio draws on both compositional and theatrical forms to enable create an intensely intimate imaginary world for the listener.

Beckett's 'Words and Music', "or some other trouble": Vaguening on the Airwaves

Samuel Beckett and Technology, 2021

On 26 May 1938 Samuel Beckett wrote to Thomas MacGreevy that ‘A terrible wireless has started nex... more On 26 May 1938 Samuel Beckett wrote to Thomas MacGreevy that ‘A terrible wireless has started next door. They turn it on when they get up, keep it on till they go out, & turn it on again when they come in. One morning it waked me at 7 am. I must put up with it.’ After reading this, anyone would be forgiven for their surprise to learn that Beckett later admitted to Donald McWhinnie on 21 February 1957 that radio had ‘captured his imagination’ and opened a new creative outlet after his post-Trilogy writers block. This chapter explores how Beckett’s experimentation with radio technology resulted in 'Words and Music', his first truly collaborative work which he devised with the composer Morton Feldman in 1961. Their collaboration resulted, I argue, in a working method and soundscape inspired and directly facilitated by their shared experimentation with radio technology. Through close literary and musical readings, the chapter asks how Beckett’s use of radio creates a new space for him to question the methods of traditional word-based storytelling and develop his intermedial aesthetic that allowed for greater ambiguity. It builds on existing scholarship on Beckett and music (Catherine Laws) and Beckett and technology (Pim Verhulst) to highlight the importance of radio technology to Beckett’s increasingly musical and experimental creative process during his radio-period.