Departing from a refreshing look at the ideas of Antonin Artaud, this book provides a thorough analysis of how both Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett are indebted to his legacy. In juxtaposing
these playwrights, De Vos minutely points out how both in their own way struggle with coming to terms with Artaud. A key concept in Lacanian psychoanalytic theories, desire lies at the root of
the Theatre of Cruelty; Kane and Beckett prove that desire and cruelty are inextricably linked to one another, but that they appear in radically different disguises. Relying on Kane and
Beckett, this book not only sheds a light on the precise intentions behind Artaud's project, it also maps out the structural parallels and dichotomies between the Theatre of Cruelty and the
literary genre of tragedy.
