Elizabeth Barry | University of Warwick (original) (raw)

Papers by Elizabeth Barry

Marion Coutts's 2014 memoir The Iceberg details the period covering her husband Tom Lubbock's dia... more Marion Coutts's 2014 memoir The Iceberg details the period covering her husband Tom Lubbock's diagnosis with an aggressive brain tumour, the progress of his condition, and his death. Lubbock, art critic for The Independent newspaper, himself wrote a short memoir (Until Further Notice, I Am Alive) about his condition, and its progressive attack on his ability to speak and write. The Iceberg, then, is Coutts's story, of her struggle to deal with the news of Lubbock's condition, to communicate with him and help him to write, and to care both for Lubbock and their young son Ev.

This article will investigate the idiom of death and memorialization in Beckett's work in relatio... more This article will investigate the idiom of death and memorialization in Beckett's work in relation to two particularly distinguished students of the epitaph, Samuel Johnson and William Wordsworth, and consider how Beckett negotiates the different expectations of writing about death that each figure has bequeathed. It will examine Beckett's exploration, following that of Wordsworth, of how far writing about the dead can borrow, imaginatively, from the 'dispassionate' and 'allequalising' perspective of death itself, and also consider Beckett's particularly laconic treatment of the difficulty in avoiding, as the Romantic poet put it, a certain 'triteness' in the summation of a life.

The concept of the middle voice, a voice denoting experience that falls between the designations ... more The concept of the middle voice, a voice denoting experience that falls between the designations of active and passive, subjective and objective, is a particularly useful one in thinking about Beckett's work. This article begins with an investigation of the linguistic concept of the middle voice and the semantic and metaphorical significance given to it in modern linguistic, psychological, and literary thought. It will then argue for its usefulness for thinking about two related aspects of Beckett's work: first, the questions of agency and the will that recur throughout Beckett's oeuvre, and second, how Beckett's early preoccupation with witness -the idea of having to be seen in order to be -transforms itself in the solitary worlds of Beckett's later works.

This article explores the emergence of the obituary in British eighteenth-century print journalis... more This article explores the emergence of the obituary in British eighteenth-century print journalism, at a moment when the verse epitaph was in irrevocable decline. The new form of death memorial that the obituary represents reflected a changing attitude to death, and a new phase in its relationship with fame. Many of the features of the present-day phenomenon of celebrity can be identified as emerging in the eighteenth century, and we recognize all too well today the explosion of commerce and the new forms of deregulated media that produced this phenomenon. Death became 'news' in the context of the new transience and mobility of printed text, and the dead gained renown not only for historically momentous acts, or lasting works of art or intellect, but also for ephemeral skills and talents such as acting, singing, sports and eccentric feats of memory or agility. Celebrity -short-lived fame -became a feature of British society, and the untimely or dramatic death began to create as well as test this new kind of fame. The obituary plays a key role in this process, this article argues, and represents an important mechanism for introducing modern notions of fame and celebrity into British society.•

Marion Coutts's 2014 memoir The Iceberg details the period covering her husband Tom Lubbock's dia... more Marion Coutts's 2014 memoir The Iceberg details the period covering her husband Tom Lubbock's diagnosis with an aggressive brain tumour, the progress of his condition, and his death. Lubbock, art critic for The Independent newspaper, himself wrote a short memoir (Until Further Notice, I Am Alive) about his condition, and its progressive attack on his ability to speak and write. The Iceberg, then, is Coutts's story, of her struggle to deal with the news of Lubbock's condition, to communicate with him and help him to write, and to care both for Lubbock and their young son Ev.

This article will investigate the idiom of death and memorialization in Beckett's work in relatio... more This article will investigate the idiom of death and memorialization in Beckett's work in relation to two particularly distinguished students of the epitaph, Samuel Johnson and William Wordsworth, and consider how Beckett negotiates the different expectations of writing about death that each figure has bequeathed. It will examine Beckett's exploration, following that of Wordsworth, of how far writing about the dead can borrow, imaginatively, from the 'dispassionate' and 'allequalising' perspective of death itself, and also consider Beckett's particularly laconic treatment of the difficulty in avoiding, as the Romantic poet put it, a certain 'triteness' in the summation of a life.

The concept of the middle voice, a voice denoting experience that falls between the designations ... more The concept of the middle voice, a voice denoting experience that falls between the designations of active and passive, subjective and objective, is a particularly useful one in thinking about Beckett's work. This article begins with an investigation of the linguistic concept of the middle voice and the semantic and metaphorical significance given to it in modern linguistic, psychological, and literary thought. It will then argue for its usefulness for thinking about two related aspects of Beckett's work: first, the questions of agency and the will that recur throughout Beckett's oeuvre, and second, how Beckett's early preoccupation with witness -the idea of having to be seen in order to be -transforms itself in the solitary worlds of Beckett's later works.

This article explores the emergence of the obituary in British eighteenth-century print journalis... more This article explores the emergence of the obituary in British eighteenth-century print journalism, at a moment when the verse epitaph was in irrevocable decline. The new form of death memorial that the obituary represents reflected a changing attitude to death, and a new phase in its relationship with fame. Many of the features of the present-day phenomenon of celebrity can be identified as emerging in the eighteenth century, and we recognize all too well today the explosion of commerce and the new forms of deregulated media that produced this phenomenon. Death became 'news' in the context of the new transience and mobility of printed text, and the dead gained renown not only for historically momentous acts, or lasting works of art or intellect, but also for ephemeral skills and talents such as acting, singing, sports and eccentric feats of memory or agility. Celebrity -short-lived fame -became a feature of British society, and the untimely or dramatic death began to create as well as test this new kind of fame. The obituary plays a key role in this process, this article argues, and represents an important mechanism for introducing modern notions of fame and celebrity into British society.•