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Chapter 6 - Creative Failures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2020

Hélène Lecossois
Affiliation:
Université de Lille
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Summary

Chapter 6 focusses primarily on Synge’s interest in the productive potential of the counterfactual. By embracing what modernity regards as failure ‒ social outcasts, for instance ‒ or as illogical ‒ a community welcoming a man who says he killed his father ‒ Synge’s plays challenge the dominant ideas of rationality that underpin modernity’s overarching frame. By ending on the exclusion of the characters that stand for other, non-rational, non-productive modes of being and knowing and by presenting the death of the cultural formation they represent as impending, the narratives of plays such as The Well of the Saints and The Shadow of the Glen highlight the depleting effects of the suppression or annihilation of these alternate epistemologies. Contrary to such narratives, however, the performance practices that are embedded within the plays advocate for the coexistence of a diversity of modes of vision and of knowledge. Embodied behaviour, which is at the heart of the theatrical performance, functions itself as an alternative epistemology. Through the shift of epistemology which they encourage, Synge’s plays celebrate the wonderful, utopian possibilities and alternatives to a capitalist modernity that performance opens up.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Creative Failures
  • Hélène Lecossois, Université de Lille
  • Book: Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge
  • Online publication: 09 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108767996.007
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  • Creative Failures
  • Hélène Lecossois, Université de Lille
  • Book: Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge
  • Online publication: 09 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108767996.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Creative Failures
  • Hélène Lecossois, Université de Lille
  • Book: Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge
  • Online publication: 09 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108767996.007
Available formats
×