Getting over Joyce in English: 'Proteus', 'Portrait' and the Genesis of Samuel Beckett's Radio Play 'Embers'

The influence of James Joyce on Samuel Beckett’s development as a young writer in the 1920s and 1930s, before he switched to French, has become a critical commonplace, often studied through Harold Bloom's ‘anxiety of influence’. Less studied, and thus less understood, is the relationship Beckett developed with Joyce's literary legacy once he returned to English as a language of composition in the mid-1950s, for the first time in ten years. The purpose of this article is to show that Joyce's influence had not yet been fully cast off in this period, and that Joyce continued to represent both a creative source of inspiration and an obstacle for Beckett. In order to illustrate this point, the article traces how Beckett re-engaged with Joyce in the 1950s and how this affected the genesis of his second play for radio, 'Embers', which draws significantly on the ‘Proteus’ chapter from 'Ulysses' and 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'.