Description
Book SynopsisGreat moments of theatrical achievement have often coincided with moments of national excitement and tension. In Ireland, after the death of Parnell in 1891, cultural and political nationalists had urgent need of each other’s vitality and vision, as both worked towards the common goal of liberating Ireland from British political and literary domination. But the political and cultural nationalists were destined to part company when the reality of an independent state seemed imminent: artists began to face the truth about their country and themselves and portrayed Ireland as it was, not as the nationalists wished to be.
This book is about the writers who moulded the mind of modern Ireland: Yeats who saw in the dramatic movement the successful overturning of the doctrines that had dominated his country since the days of Young Ireland; Synge and O’Casey who presented with uncompromising brutality the suffering of Irishmen who found little solace in nationalist
