Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 13
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
2000
Online ISBN:
9780511486029

Book description

In this book Nicholas Grene explores political contexts for some of the outstanding Irish plays from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. The politics of Irish drama have previously been considered primarily the politics of national self-expression. Here it is argued that Irish plays, in their self-conscious representation of the otherness of Ireland, are outwardly directed towards audiences both at home and abroad. The political dynamics of such relations between plays and audiences is the book's multiple subject: the stage interpretation of Ireland from The Shaughraun to Translations; the contentious stage images of Yeats, Gregory and Synge; reactions to revolution from O'Casey to Behan; the post-colonial worlds of Purgatory and All that Fall; the imagined Irelands of Friel and Murphy, McGuinness and Barry. With its fundamental reconception of the politics of Irish drama, this book represents an alternative view of the phenomenon of Irish drama itself.

Reviews

‘Grene’s intelligence, erudition and mostly jargon-free lucidity make this, in fact, the best survey of 20th-century Irish playwriting yet written. It completes so authoritatively, indeed, the job of telling one kind of story about modern Irish drama that it clears the ground for a whole new look at what that story is or might be.’

Fintan O’Toole Source: The Irish Times

'… lucid and provocative … What is rewarding about Grene's elegantly and cleanly written book is his clear-sighted and rigorous analysis … Grene provides one of the most engaging and challenging overviews of 20th century Irish drama.'

Source: Irish Theatre Magazine

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.