"FAITH COMETH BY HEARING, AND HEARING BY THE WORD OF GOD": The Status of Beckett's Religious Language

This article looks at the particular status of religious language in Beckett's writing. It considers the value of Biblical language both in Beckett's development of an impersonal aesthetic and for his exploration of the question of presence and authority in the literary text. The paper begins with an exploration of Beckett's ambivalent relationship with an idiom at once personal and impersonal, and goes on to show the imaginative possibilities he found in a language that escapes from the secular dichotomy of metaphorical and literal reference.