Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions: Playwrights, Sexual Politics and the International Left, 1892-1964

Susan Cannon Harris

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2017

Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions

Playwrights, Sexual Politics and the International Left, 1892-1964

Susan Cannon Harris

In the series Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism, Drama and Performance

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474424479

Overview
Contents

About this book

Reveals the untold story of Irish drama’s engagement with modernity’s sexual and social revolutions

The first modern Irish playwrights emerged in London in the 1890s, at the intersection of a rising international socialist movement and a new campaign for gender equality and sexual freedom. Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions shows how Irish playwrights mediated between the sexual and the socialist revolutions, and traces their impact on left theatre in Europe and America from the 1890s to the 1960s. Drawing on original archival research, the study reconstructs the engagement of Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, Synge, O’Casey, and Beckett with socialists and sexual radicals like Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Florence Farr, Bertolt Brecht, and Lorraine Hansberry.

Key Features

Argues for and models a way of reconciling Marxist politics with identity politics, instead of privileging one over the other
Offers the first sustained investigation of Irish drama’s engagement with left culture in Europe and North America
Offers fresh readings of canonical plays by major authors while elaborating a new and generative argument about Ireland’s contribution to modern drama and literary modernism
Uses hard-to-find archival sources to recover and reinterpret crucial but forgotten and/or misunderstood moments in theater history and in the history of the cultural left
Brings Marxist and feminist/queer theoretical concerns together to produce a nuanced and revealing account of the interaction between sexual and social politics in the first half of the twentieth century

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 DESIRING WOMEN: IRISH PLAYWRIGHTS, NEW WOMEN AND QUEER SOCIALISM, 1892–1894 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
2 ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: UTOPIAN DESIRES, DESIGNS AND DEFERRALS IN MAN AND SUPERMAN AND JOHN BULL’S OTHER ISLAND Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
3 WE’LL KEEP THE RED FLAG FLYING HERE: SYNDICALISM, JIM LARKIN AND IRISH MASCULINITY AT THE ABBEY THEATRE, 1911–1919 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
4 MOBILISING MAURYA: J. M. SYNGE, BERTOLT BRECHT AND THE REVOLUTIONARY MOTHER Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
5 THE FLAMING SUNFLOWER: THE SOVIET UNION AND SEAN O’CASEY’S POST-REALISM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
EPILOGUE: WHAT THE IRISH LEFT – SEAN O’CASEY, SAMUEL BECKETT AND LORRAINE HANSBERRY’S THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
WORKS CITED Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 280
Illustrations
- Other: 3 B/W illustrations
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: June 28, 2017
ISBN: 9781474424479