in 1300, it is assumed that Duccio must have died by that date. Beckett's Belacqua Samuel Beckett, whose favorite reading was Dante, closely identified with Belacqua and his indolence. Beckett introduced ‘Belacqua Shuah’ as the main character in his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Unpublishable at the time, Beckett tried again with More Pricks Than Kicks, a collection of ten interrelated short stories on the life and death of Belacqua, and this was published, although a very poor seller. Beckett makes the Dante connection explicit in the first story, ‘Dante and the Lobster’: Belacqua is studying Dante. An eleventh story, ‘Echo's Bones’ was unpublishable at the time. It tells of the indolent afterlife of Belacqua, trying to sit in a fetal position as much as possible and being interrupted by visitors. In later fiction, Beckett would sometimes refer to Dante's Belacqua. The title character of Murphy has a Belacqua fantasy. The narrator of How It Is describes one of his sleeping postures in terms of Belacqua. Company'''s narrator refers to the ‘old lutist cause of Dante's first quarter-smile’ and wonders if the old lutist has made it to Paradise by now. At the beginning of Molloy'', the narrator, who is doing nothing but watching passers, likens himself to Belacqua or Sordello as he crouches to avoid being detected. General references Dante related Beckett related References Fictional characters based on real people