Studies on Sean O'Casey


Book Description

A large number of critics who have tried to penetrate the complexity of Sean O'Casey's theatrical works have been fighting against a matter which seems to reject every easy outline and label. They seem to be shaped by a deep will to experiment which leads the author to embrace theatrical forms and techniques very different from each other. This is why almost all of his plays appear full of contradictory elements and tendencies, traumatic breaks and bold innovations. After his "explosion" at the Abbey Theatre of Dublin with the vigorous realism of his trilogy, O'Casey abandons this reassuring haven – it was probably too reassuring for his restlessness – and begins his collection of "experimental" plays, starting with The Silver Tassie (1929) and going on with Within the Gates (1910), The Star Turns Red, 1940, Red Roses For Me (1912)...




Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly


Book Description

This book details the Irish socialistic tracks pursued by Bernard Shaw and Sean O’Casey, mostly after 1916, that were arguably impacted by the executed James Connolly. The historical context is carefully unearthed, stretching from its 1894 roots via W. B. Yeats’ dream of Shaw as a menacing, yet grinning sewing machine, to Shaw’s and O’Casey’s 1928 masterworks. In the process, Shaw’s War Issues for Irishmen, Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, Saint Joan, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and O’Casey’s The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, and The Silver Tassie are reconsidered, revealing previously undiscovered textures to the masterworks. All of which provides a rethinking, a reconsideration of Ireland’s great drama of the 1920s, as well as furthering the knowledge of Shaw, O’Casey, and Connolly.




The Silver Tassie


Book Description

Ireland, World War One. Dashing Harry Heegan leads his football team to victory, arriving home in swaggering celebration before he grabs his kit and heads for the trenches. A nightmare world awaits, the men, reduced to cannon fodder, speaking in mangled incantations as the casualties stack up. Months later, Harry returns, a cripple at the football club party. Everyone but the shattered war veterans dance and forget.




A Century of Irish Drama


Book Description

This book traces a significant shift in 20th century Irish theatre from the largely national plays produced in Dublin to a more expansive international art form. Confirmed by the recent success outside of Ireland of the "third wave" of Irish playwrights writing in the 1990s, the new Irish drama has encouraged critics to reconsider both the early national theatre and the dramatic tradition it fostered. On the occasion of the centenary of the first professional production of the Irish Literary Theatre, the contributors to this volume investigate contemporary Irish drama's aesthetic features and socio-political commitments and re-read the plays produced earlier in the century. Although these essayists cover a wide range of topics, from the productions and objectives of the Abbey Theatre's first rivals to mid-century theatre festivals, to plays about the "Troubles" in the North, they all reassess the oppositions so commonplace in critical discussions of Irish drama: nationalism vs. internationalism, high vs. low culture, urban experience vs. rural or peasant life. A Century of Irish Drama includes essays on such figures as W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Christina Read, Martin McDonagh, and many more. Stephen Watt is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington, and author of Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage, Joyce, O'Casey, and the Irish Popular Theatre, and essays on Irish and Irish-American culture. He has also written extensively on higher education, most recently Academic Keywords: A Devil's Dictionary for Higher Education (with Cary Nelson). Eileen M. Morgan is a lecturer in English and Irish Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is currently working on Sean O'Faolain's biographies of De Valera and on Edna O'Brien's 1990s trilogy, and is preparing a book-length study on the influence of radio in Ireland. Shakir Mustafa is a Visiting Instructor in the English department at Indiana University. His work has appeared in such journals as New Hibernia Review and The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, and he is now translating Arabic short stories into English. Drama and Performance Studies--Timothy Wiles, general editor










The Theatre of Sean O'Casey


Book Description

A Critical Companion to one of Ireland's most famous, studied and controversial, playwrights, this provides a detailed exploration of O'Casey's oeuvre taking in his plays, autobiographical writing and essays. Special attention is paid to the Three Dublin Plays and the works in performance.







Sean O'Casey


Book Description

Se?O'Casey was the quintessential Dublin playwright. In critical works that include his Dublin Trilogy - The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars - he portrayed the traumatic birth of a nation and delved into the Irish national character. Christopher Murray's Se?O'Casey: Writer at Work takes a fresh look at the last of the great writers of the Irish literary revival.




Captain Jack White


Book Description

Captain Jack White DSO (1879 1946) is a fascinating yet neglected figure in Irish history. Son of Field Marshal Sir George White V.C., he became a Boer war hero, and crucially was the first Commandant of the Irish Citizen Army. One of the few notable figures in Ireland to declare himself an anarchist, he led a remarkable life of action, and was a most unsystematic thinker. This is a long overdue assessment of his life and times. Leo Keohane vividly brings to life the contradictory worlds and glamour of this mercurial figure, who knew Lord Kitchener, was a dinner companion of King Edward and the Kaiser, who corresponded with H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and Tolstoy, and shared a platform with G.B. Shaw, Conan Doyle, Roger Casement and Alice Stopford Green. The founder of the Irish Citizen Army along with James Connolly, White marched (and argued) with James Larkin during the 1913 Lockout, worked with Sean O Casey, liaised with Constance Markievicz and socialised with most of the Irish activists and literati of the early twentieth century. A man who lived many lives, White was the ultimate outsider beset by divided loyalties with an alternative philosophy and an inability to conform.




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