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PREFACE alma mater, as part of the University’s centenary celebration. Of the forty-two participants, the essays of twenty-three were published in the volume, written by scholars from ten countries. In this new collection, the essays written for the special, off-year conference in Budapest are in response to the organizers’ Call for Papers that sought the widest possible range of subject matter and approaches suggested under the broad title Beckett Influencing / Influencing Beckett: “innumerable playwrights, novelists, philosophers, artists, composers, performers, film makers, and critical thinkers whose writings and creative life stimulated and inspired Beckett and echo through his writing,” as well the ways in which “Beckett, too, has had a profound impact on his contemporaries and those who have followed him.” In addition, the title allows essays to focus on two possible points of entry into Beckett’s works: “back to those whose creative output, forms, ideas, and subject matter resonate in Beckett’s oeuvre; forward to those who have found and continue to find inspiration in Beckett’s works, particularly theatre.” These guidelines are reflected in this volume. The main goal of the publication, as it is of the Beckett Working Group and the collections that precede it, is to present and stimulate new ways of looking at Beckett’s writing so that young researchers and theatre practitioners, as well as long-established scholars and artists, will be prompted to create their own studies and performances of his plays. It is our hope that the book will achieve this end. The IFTR regulations for working groups states: “Groups exist as long as they are useful, and then may stop meeting when goals are met or members are tired of their programs.” As this rich and diversified collection of essays illustrates, Beckett scholars are neither tired nor finished. Like Beckett and his characters, we go on. + ]1 +
