DRINKIN' BEER N' VINO' N' JAMESON: From Booze to Birth in Beckett

Abstract

This essay proposes that as part of a complex semiotic in which Beckett attempts to overcome his own birth trauma, he displaces the maternal imago onto the Irish public house. In turn, this displacement drives latent creative impulses that mirror the activities of both wombing and weaning in Beckett's early fiction. The essay also constitutes a humorous but nonetheless relevant intervention in current studies regarding Beckett's cultural identity by suggesting that Beckett's early prose, which figures the Irish public house as a maternal space, challenges the male gendering of the pub in post-independence Ireland.