Description
Book SynopsisMost 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.
Table of ContentsC.C. BARFOOT: By Way of an Introduction: The Case of Saint Joan. Stanley WEINTRAUB: Jesting and Governing: Shaw and Churchill. Rodelle WEINTRAUB: Votes for Women: Bernard Shaw and the Women's Suffrage Movement. Maureen S.G. HAWKINS: Playing Both Ends Against the Middle: Boucicault's Political Positions in Robert Emmet. Bernard McKENNA: Playing the Seachran as the Shaughraun: Dion Boucicault and Representations of the Irish and Anglo-Irish. Michiko WAKAMATSU: All Our Moments Are Divine: Synge's Harsh Comedy The Tinker's Wedding. Bernice SCHRANK: The Politics of O'Casey's War Plays: Pacifism and Progress in The Silver Tassie and Oak Leaves and Lavender. Kinereth MEYER: The Politics of Performance in Sean O'Casey's Drama. Colbert KEARNEY: The Voice of the Man in The Plough and the Stars. Robert COCHRAN: There You Are Again: The Minimal Politics of Samuel Beckett. Ulf DANTANUS: Brian Friels Histories. Patrick BURKE: Brian's Friel's Worst Play and the Condition of Ireland Question. Munira HAMUD MUTRAN: The Two Mirrors of Brian Friel in The Mundy Scheme and Dancing at Lughnasa. Mária Kurdi: We All Have Our Codes. We All Have Our Masks: Language and Politics in Brian Friel's Stage Version of Fathers and Sons. Mitchell W. Harris: An Ersatz Ministry of Culture: The Political Cultural Function of the Field Day Theatre Company. Lionel PILKINGTON: The Superior Game: Colonialism and the Stereotype in Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark. Kathleen A. QUINN: Re-visioning the Goddess: Drama, Women, and Empowerment. Shaun RICHARDS: In the Border Country: Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Irish Drama. Notes on Contributors.
