Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899-1949

by P. Murphy

Overview

Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899-1949 offers a theoretically innovative reconsideration of drama produced in the Irish Renaissance, as well as an engagement with non-canonical drama in the under-researched period 1926-1949.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230536838
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	11/05/2008
Edition description:	2008
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

PAUL MURPHY is Lecturer in Drama Studies at Queen's University Belfast, UK, and is President of the Irish Society for Theatre Research.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART I: PEASANT QUALITY AND THE NATIONAL QUINTESSENCE Dream of the Noble and the Beggarman To Live the Things That I Before Imagined Whatever Rule We May Have, We'll Always Have Our Tramps and Paupers That Ireland Which We Dreamed Of PART II: THE WOMAN AND ITS VICISSITUDES   What Kind of a Living Woman is it That You Are At All? That a Black Twisty Divil Could Be Hiding Under Such Comeliness Sure if I Was a Good Wife to Him – That Mightn't Be An Easy Job! Woman Gives to the State Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

'Paul Murphy excavates some neglected Irish drama, and re-reads more familiar plays, with an arrestingly original combination of historical and psychoanalytical insight. This is a brave, trenchant work, which probes away most rewardingly at the rich seam where history and fantasy meet.' - Terry Eagleton, John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory, University of Manchester, UK

'In a superbly argued and well theorised book, Paul Murphy shifts the narrative of Irish theatre history beyond nation formation and into the very productive terrain of the class and gender of the country's subalterns in performance.' Brian Singleton, Head of Drama, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; President, International Federation for Theatre Research

'Theoretically informed and critically focused, this book is a searching exploration of Irish drama in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on Lacan and i ek, Murphy demonstrates how central to the construction of that drama were the Peasant and the Woman as symbolic forms onto which political desires could be and were projected. The issue of class is introduced and that of gender extended in a series of meticulous and historicised readings which valuably widens the canon of Irish drama. He makes the case for such unjustly neglected figures as Northern Irish playwright George Shiels while registering with sensitivity the class and gender constraints within which a writer like Lady Gregory was forced to operate. Throughout, Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899-1949 challenges received opinion and raises crucial issues which every student of the subject will need to consider.' - Anthony Roche, Associate Professor of English, University College Dublin, Ireland

From the Publisher