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Series I: Correspondence, 1937-1992, bulk 1967-1992
Series II: Early scholarly work by Sighle Kennedy, 1963-1969
Series V: Other scholarly and Beckett-related printed material, 1970-1996

Sighle Kennedy papers, 1920s-1996, bulk 1963-1996

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Series IV: Scholarly material for related projects on Beckett, circa 1978-1996

Series IV houses notebooks, loose notes, note cards, drafts, and research materials on Beckett's relationships to other writers and thinkers. While these studies may have emerged from Kennedy's work on Watt — and in fact some of her Watt notes appear intermittently here — the projects seem to have eventually taken on a life of their own, and contributed to at least one of Kennedy's published articles and to another projected book (on Beckett and Dante).

Subseries IV.1: Beckett and Arnold Geulincx, 1985-1989

Subseries 1 features notes, drafts, and photocopied research material related to Kennedy's research on the connections between Beckett's writing and that of Arnold Geulincx, a seventeenth-century Flemish philosopher whose work concerned ethics and the mind-body relationship. Related articles on Erasmus also appear here. Many of these materials are annotated by Kennedy.


Box 8 Folder 6 Map of the Netherlands, in pencil, undated

Box 8 Folder 7 Notes and drafts, undated

Box 8 Folder 8 Notes and drafts, 1985-1989

Box 8 Folder 9 Research material on Geulincx and Beckett, undated


Box 9 Folder 1 Research material on Geulincx and Beckett, undated

Box 9 Folder 2 Research material on Geulincx and Erasmus, undated

Subseries IV.2: Beckett and Dante, 1980-1996

Subseries 2 contains notes and drafts Kennedy produced during her study of Beckett's relationship to Dante. The bulk of the grouping consists of Kennedy's research material: photocopies of literary works, scholarly articles and chapters, and occasionally encyclopedia entries, on Dante and related writers including Augustine, Aquinas, Democritus, and Peter Abelard. Many, but not all, of these photocopies are annotated by Kennedy. Most of the scholarly articles are in English, though some are in Italian.

Box 9 Folder 3 Notes, undated

Box 9 Folder 4 Notes, circa 1980 "Samuel Beckett's Dante 'Revelation'", 1980

Box 9 Folder 5 Notebook, 1986-1991 "Beckett, Belacqua and the Sphere of Fortune", 1986-1991

Box 9 Folder 6 Notebook, 1988-1990 "Beckett and Dante and Geulincx", 1988-1990

Box 9 Folder 7 Notebook, 1988-1993 "Beckett's moral influences; Dante", 1988-1993

Box 9 Folder 8 Notebook, 1989-1990

Box 9 Folder 9 Notebook, 1989-1992

Box 9 Folder 10 Notebook, 1989-1993 "Huguenot Fantasy; Moral Debt to James Joyce; Beckett's Dante 'Revelation'; Dante and Fortuna", 1989-1993

Box 9 Folder 11 Notebook, 1990- : "SB and Debt to Geulincx; Artist at Crossroads (Debt to Joyce); SB and Dante; SB: Beginning and End (early life in Ireland)"

Box 9 Folder 12 Loose notes and drafts, 1990- : "Beckett's Dantean Struggle for Liberty"


Box 10 Folder 1 Course notes, 1990 September-December : "Sources of the Divine Comedy," ProJoan Ferrante, 1990 September-December

Box 10 Folder 2 Notebook, 1990-1992 "Day Notes", 1990-1992

Box 10 Folder 3 Notebook, 1990-1996

Box 10 Folder 4 Notebook, 1991 "Drafts: Beckett, Belacqua and the Sphere of Fortune", 1991

Box 10 Folder 5 Notebooks and notes, 1991 Beckett and Belacqua, 1991

Box 10 Folder 6 Notebooks, 1991-1992 "Watt; Belacqua in the Sphere of Fortune", 1991-1992

Box 10 Folder 7 Notebook, 1991-1993

Box 10 Folder 8 Loose notes, drafts and notebook, 1992 "Beckett's Dante 'Revelation,'" "Beckett's Belacqua", 1992

Box 10 Folder 9 Notebook, 1992 "Belacqua and the Sphere of Fortune: Supplementary Notes", 1992

Box 10 Folder 10 Notebook and notes, 1992, 1996 On Teodolinda Barolini's The Undivine Comedy, 1992, 1996

Box 10 Folder 11 Loose notes, drafts and notebook, 1993 "Beckett's Dante 'Revelation': Belacqua in the Sphere of Fortune"; analysis of Dream of Fair to Middling Women, 1993


Box 11 Folder 1 Draft, 1993 "Belacqua and the Sphere of Fortune", 1993

Box 11 Folder 2 Notebooks, 1993-1995 "Beckett's Dante 'Revelation'", 1993-1995

Box 11 Folder 3 Loose notes, drafts, notebooks, 1994 "Beckett-Dante Relationship" (transcript of interview with Ethne Kennedy and outline for proposed monograph), 1994

Box 11 Folder 4 Loose notes, drafts, and notebooks, 1995 "Beckett's Belacqua Explores Dante's Sphere of Fortune", 1995

Box 11 Folder 5 Loose notes, drafts and notebooks, 1995 "Beckett's Belacqua Explores Dante's Sphere of Fortune"; Dante and "Fortuna", 1995

Box 11 Folder 6 Loose notes and drafts, 1996 "Beckett's Global Dante: Belacqua in the Sphere of Fortune", 1996

Box 11 Folder 7-10 Research material on Dante, undated, (4 Folders)


Box 12 Folder 1-6 Research material on Dante, undated, (6 Folders)


Box 13 Folder 1-7 Research material on Dante, undated, (7 Folders)


Box 14 Folder 1-6 Research material on Dante, undated, (6 Folders)


Box 15 Folder 1 Research material on Dante, undated

Subseries IV.3: Beckett and James Joyce, 1978-1989

Subseries 3 consists of research materials (including periodicals), notes, and drafts which address James Joyce, and also Beckett's relationship to his mentor. Three variously titled drafts of an article-length work on the Joyce-Beckett connection allow one to follow Kennedy's writing process.

Box 15 Folder 2 Notes, undated

Box 15 Folder 3 Draft, undated: "Samuel Beckett's Tribute to James Joyce: A Matter of Integrity"

Box 15 Folder 4 Notes and research material for course on Joyce, 1978-1984

Box 15 Folder 5 Draft, circa 1984 "Samuel Beckett's Creative Metamorphosis: A Moral 'Bequest' from James Joyce", 1984

Box 15 Folder 6 Notebook and notes, 1987

Box 15 Folder 7 Notebook, loose notes and drafts, 1987-1989 "Samuel Beckett's Long Metamorphosis: A Moral Bequest from James Joyce", 1987-1989

Box 15 Folder 8-9 Research materials, undated, (2 Folders)

Box 15 Folder 10 Joyce centenary materials, 1982

Box 15 Folder 11 James Joyce Quarterly 10.1 (Fall 1972) and 11.2 (Winter 1974)

Subseries IV.4: Scholarly material on other writing by Beckett, 1929-1983, undated

Contained in Subseries 4 are annotated photocopies of and notes on other writings produced by Beckett between 1929 and 1983, includingWaiting for Godot,the long-unpublishedDream of Fair to Middling Womenand Eleuthéria,and many of Beckett's shorter works (including reviews and poems). Of special interest is the 1962 unrevised typescript forPlay,which Kennedy's attached note indicates was given to her in May 1973. (It is unclear who typed this draft of Beckett's play, though the corrections to the script are not in the author's hand.)


Box 16 Folder 1 Annotated photocopy of Dream of Fair to Middling Women typescript, with related materials (1932),, undated

Box 16 Folder 2 Annotated photocopy of Eleutheria (1947), with related materials,, undated

Box 16 Folder 3 Annotated photocopy, transcript and photographs of En Attendant Godot manuscript (1948), undated

Box 16 Folder 4 Notes on En Attendant Godot manuscript (1948), undated

Box 16 Folder 5 Annotated photocopy of En Attendant Godot (1952), undated

Box 16 Folder 6 Photocopies of other writing by Beckett, annotations undated, 1929-1983, undated

All Strange Away typescript (1976)

"Assumption" (1929)

Breath (1969)

Cap au Pire (1983)

"Cascando" (1936)

"A Case in a Thousand" (1934)

Catastrophe (1983)

"Che Siagura" (1929)

Company (1979)

"Le Concentrisme" (circa 1928)

"Dante and the Lobster" (1934)

"Denis Devlin" (1938)

"Les Deux Besoins" (circa 1938)

"Echo's Bones" typescript (circa 1935)

Eh Joe typescript (1965)

"The Essential and the Incidental" (1934)

"Ex Cathezra" (1934)

"The Expelled" (1946-47)

"First Love" (1946)

"For Future Reference" (1930)

"Henri Hayden" (1955)

Box 16 Folder 7 Photocopies of other writing by Beckett, continued, 1929-1983

"Humanistic Quietism" (1934)

Not I typescript (1972)

"Peintres de l'empèchement" typescript and manuscript (1947-48)

"La Peinture des Van Velde ou le monde et le pantaloon" typescript (1945)

Play typescript, unrevised version (1962)

"Poetry is Vertical" (1932)

A Piece of Monologue (1979)

"Suite" excerpt, undated

"Three Dialogues, Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit" (1949)

What Where typescript (1983)

Worstward Ho (1983)

Subseries IV.5: Notes and research material on Samuel Beckett, general, 1934-1996

Subseries 5 collects notes and research material on Beckett that Kennedy had not assigned to a particular scholarly project. Included are Kennedy's notecards, scholarly and newspaper articles in English and in French, and a newspaper clipping file that contains articles published from 1958-1996. Also housed here is a group of periodicals containing scholarly writing on Beckett, most of which has been annotated by Kennedy.


Box 17 Folder 1 Notes, general, undated

Box 17 Folder 2-3 Scholarly and newspaper articles in English (1934-1991), (2 Folders)

Box 17 Folder 4 Scholarly and newspaper articles in French (1961-1985)

Box 17 Folder 5 Newspaper articles in English, 1958-1996

Box 17 Folder 6 Research material (1938-1973)

Periodicals containing scholarly writing on Samuel Beckett, annotated by Kennedy,1974-1987


Box 18 Folder 1 Contemporary Literature 15.4 (Autumn 1974)

Box 18 Folder 2 Irish University Review (Autumn 1974)

Box 18 Folder 3 James Joyce Quarterly 8.4 (Summer 1971)

Box 18 Folder 4 Journal of Beckett Studies 2 (Winter 1976)

Box 18 Folder 5 Journal of Beckett Studies 3 (Summer 1978)

Box 18 Folder 6 Journal of Beckett Studies 4 (Spring 1979)

Box 18 Folder 7 Journal of Beckett Studies 5 (Autumn 1979)

Box 18 Folder 8 Journal of Beckett Studies 6 (Autumn 1980)

Box 18 Folder 9 Journal of Beckett Studies 11/12 (1989), 11/12

Box 18 Folder 10 New Theatre Magazine 11.3 (1971)

Box 18 Folder 11 The Review of Contemporary Fiction 7.2 (Summer 1987)


Box 19 Notecards, A-G, undated


Box 20 Notecards, H-Z, undated