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The politics of Irish drama : plays in context from Boucicault to Friel / Nicholas Grene.

By: Grene, Nicholas.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookSeries: Cambridge studies in modern theatre.Publisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999Description: xvii, 312 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.ISBN: 0521660513 ; 0521665361 .Subject(s): Boucicault, Dion, 1820-1890 -- Political and social views | Friel, Brian -- Political and social views | English drama -- Irish authors -- History and criticism | Politics and literature -- Ireland -- History -- 19th century | Politics and literature -- Ireland -- History -- 20th century | Political plays, English -- History and criticism | Theater -- Political aspects -- IrelandDDC classification: 822.009358
Contents:
Introduction -- Stage Interpreters -- Strangers in the house -- Shifts in perspective -- Class and space in O'Casey -- Reactions to revolution -- Living on -- Versions of pastoral -- Murphy's Ireland -- Imagining the other -- Conclusion: a world elsewhere.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
General Lending MTU Bishopstown Library Lending 822.009358 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00078023
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Politics of Irish Drama analyzes some twenty-five of the best-known Irish plays from those of Dion Boucicault to Sebastian Barry, including works by Shaw, Yeats, Lady Gregory and Beckett. The book looks at political contexts for these plays and, in arguing for the outward-directed nature of dramatic representation of Ireland, shows Irish drama to be an international as much as national phenomenon.

Bibliography: (pages 290-300) and index.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-289).

Introduction -- Stage Interpreters -- Strangers in the house -- Shifts in perspective -- Class and space in O'Casey -- Reactions to revolution -- Living on -- Versions of pastoral -- Murphy's Ireland -- Imagining the other -- Conclusion: a world elsewhere.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Acknowledgements
  • Chronology
  • List of abbreviations
  • Introduction
  • 1 Stage interpreters
  • 2 Strangers in the house
  • 3 Shifts in perspective
  • 4 Class and space in O'Casey
  • 5 Reactions to revolution
  • 6 Living on
  • 7 Versions of pastoral
  • 8 Murphy's Ireland
  • 9 Imagining the other
  • Conclusion: a world elsewhere
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Grene (Trinity College, Dublin) revisits the oft-analyzed connection between politics and Irish theater. Focusing on a venerable tradition, the self-conscious staging of the Irish people and nation from the Victorian period to the present, he offers a valuable addition to a literature that includes D.E.S. Maxwell's A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama 1891-1980 (CH, Sep'85) and Christopher Murray's Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to Nation (CH, Jan'98). Grene examines representations of "Irishness" with an eye to the complexities of audience, insisting that "Irish drama is outward-directed, created as much to be viewed from outside as from inside Ireland." The opening chapter--in which Grene uses three plays by Dion Boucicault, G.B. Shaw, and Brian Friel to illustrate the changes and continuities in the theatrical representation of Ireland--can stand as a useful introduction to the field. The chapter tracking the divergent careers of Friel and Tom Murphy offers a persuasive reading of the pastoral tradition at work in audience responses to their plays. Friel's drama, Grene argues, "owes some of its success outside Ireland to the way it answers to audience needs for Irish drama to act as pastoral," while Murphy's plays "remain fully resistant" to that mode. Strongly recommended for upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections. H. J. Holder; Central Michigan University

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