Ruin Ritual And Remembrance In Twentieth Century Irish Drama

This monograph explores the development of Irish drama in the 20th century and discusses recent cultural critiques of the entire enterprise of the Irish theatre. Rollins interprets Yeats, Synge, Beckett, Friel and McGuiness among others as practitioners in a kind of national reformulation of ritual and memory. This is one of the most thorough one volume discussions of the greatest century of Irish dramatic creativity and influence. "...I am impressed with the critical writing in Ronald Rollins's RUIN, RITUAL AND REMBRANCE. His scholarship focuses on Ireland's intricate history and Yeat's definition of maimed Irish space " great hatred, little room." Rollins deals with three playwrights, Sean O'Casey, Denis Johnston and the contemporary Frank McGuiness and their response to the nationalist uprising of 1916. Rollins points up after artful consideration of the older dramatists, the special relevance of McGuiness' idea that the Ulster rebels of pre World War 1 are the same as the Dublin rebels of 1916, the flip side of the coin. These writer see each denomination in Ireland as ordinary, half inspired, half bigoted human beings curiously united in their defiant rhetoric. The central thrust of the study is a consideration of the nationalist poet/playwright and leader Patrick Pearse as a man lost in the labyrinth of revolutionary rhetoric; in Rollins approach to McGuiness' THE SONS OF ULSTER MARCHING TOWARDS THE SOMME, Rollins argues the proposition that the character Piper is a counter figure to Pearse, similarly involved in the ritual chants of war, youth and death. The difference is that the real life Pearse shot by the British survives as an icon of Irish republicanism while the fictional Piper lives to see the Protestant house of Ulster crumble. Rollin's work is full of insights like this. Buy the book." ---James Liddy " ...highly recommended." Professor Robert Mahony-Catholic University of America

Irish literature's roots have been traced to the 7th-9th century. This is a rich and hardy literature starting with descriptions of the brave deeds of kings, saints and other heroes. These were followed by generous veins of religious, historical, genealogical, scientific and other works. The development of prose, poetry and drama raced along with the times. Modern, well-known Irish writers include: William Yeats, James Joyce, Sean Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, John Synge and Samuel Beckett.

Surveying the life, work and accolades of Irish playwright Brian Friel, this literary companion investigates his personal and professional relationships and his literary topics and themes, such as belonging, violence, patriarchy and hypocrisy. Character summaries describe his most significant figures, particularly St. Columba, the victims of Derry's Bloody Sunday, and Hugh O'Neill, the Lord of Tyrone. Entries analyze Friel's style in detail, from his column in the Irish Times and his short fiction in the New Yorker to his most recent plays, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Translations, and Dancing at Lughnasa.

A selectively comprehensive bibliography of the vast literature about Samuel Beckett's dramatic works, arranged for the efficient and convenient use of scholars on all levels.

Most of the essays in Ritual Remembering: History, Myth and Politics in Anglo-Irish Drama, in part or in whole, frequently allude or directly concern themselves with the dramatic representation of the opposition or the collusion of myth and history, and the uses and abuses of both. Equally they celebrate and critically analyse the politics of the social conscience and social consciousness which pervades Irish drama in its rituals of forgetfulness and memory. Perhaps myth is above all to be understood as the conscience and consciousness of history; and politics is the projection of that myth into present social action - on the hustings (nowadays more frequently the television hustings), at the ballot box, in writing and on the stage. Most of the articles in this volume revolve around these gravely portentous and ambivalent themes, which nobody who is as much concerned with Anglo-Irish relations as with Anglo-Irish literature can disregard or evade.

Murray provides an overview of a nation's theatre read in the light of a nation's self-definition. Mediating between history and its troubled relation with politics and art, he shows the preoccupations of Irish drama.