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Synge Scholarship: Nothing to Do with Nationalism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2011

CHRISTOPHER COLLINS
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Extract

John Millington Synge (1871–1909) is the fulcrum upon which Irish drama and theatre studies is balanced. Synge's nodal position is predicated upon the dramatist's rock ‘n’ roll recalcitrance towards the dramaturgical praxis of his contemporaries; his subject matter was as shocking as the Anglo-Irish idiom in which it was articulated. After Synge's premature death in 1909, W. B. Yeats's fundamental concern was that Synge scholars would attempt ‘to mould . . . some simple image of the man’. However, W. J. McCormack's concentric biography of Synge, The Fool of the Family: A Life of J. M. Synge, and Ann Saddlemyer's The Collected Letters of John Millington Synge, have demonstrated that Synge's life was complex, multifaceted and in deep dialogue with Irish culture. But with respect to Synge's drama a simple image has surrounded critical discourse: the politics of Irish nationalism.

Type
Publications Dossier: Changing the Landscape of Irish Theatre Studies
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , October 2011 , pp. 272 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2011

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References

NOTES

1 W. B. Yeats, ‘A Memory of Synge’, Irish Statesman, 5 July 1924.

2 McCormack, W. J., Fool of the Family: A Life of J. M. Synge (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000)Google Scholar.

3 Synge, J. M., The Collected Letters of John Millington Synge, ed. Saddlemyer, Ann, Volume I: 1871–1907 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar and Volume II: 1907–1909 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

4 Synge, J. M., Collected Works, Volume III: Plays Book I, ed. Saddlemyer, Ann (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 224Google Scholar.

5 Corkery, Daniel, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

6 Grene, Nicholas, Synge: A Critical Study of the Plays (London and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1975)Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 4.

8 Kiberd, Declan, Synge and the Irish Language (London and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 King, Mary C., The Drama of J. M. Synge (London: Fourth Estate, 1985)Google Scholar.

10 Kiberd, Synge and the Irish Language, p. 5.

11 Mattar, Sinéad Garrigan, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Kiberd, Declan, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1996), 1996Google Scholar.

13 Murphy, Paul, ‘J. M. Synge and the Pitfalls of National Consciousness’, Theatre Research International, 28, 2 (2003), pp. 125–42Google Scholar. See also Murphy, Paul, Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899–1949 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)Google Scholar.

14 Murphy, ‘J. M. Synge and the Pitfalls of National Consciousness’, p. 128.

15 Grene, Nicholas, ed., Interpreting Synge: Essays from the Synge Summer School: 1991–2000 (Dublin: Liliput Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

16 Lonergan, Patrick, ed., Synge and His Influences: Centenary Essays from the Synge Summer School (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

17 Roche, Anthony, ‘Synge and Contemporary Irish Drama’, in Matthews, P. J., ed., The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

18 Knowlson, James and Pilling, John, Frescoes of the Skull: The Later Prose and Drama of Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1980), p. 260Google Scholar.

19 Eileen Battersby, ‘A Double Take of Savage Realism’, Irish Times, 7 February 2009.

20 A. F., ‘I Don't Care a Rap’, Dublin Evening Mail, 29 January 1907.