Overview

A Reader's Guide to Modern Irish Drama provides an introduction to one of the great dramatic and theatrical traditions of Western culture. As a comprehensive contemporary study of Irish Drama, the book includes the most recent and youngest playwrights working today at the Abbey, Druid and Lyric Theatres. Beginning with essays on 20th-century Irish history, The Irish Literary Theatre and the development of the Modern Irish Theatre in Dublin, Belfast, Galway and other cities, A Reader's Guide to Modern Irish Drama then presents biographies and bibliographies of over 25 major 20th-century Irish dramatists from Lady Gregory, Yeats and Synge through O'Casey, Beckett and Behan; from Friel and McGuinness to Marina Carr and Martin McDonagh. Perhaps most significantly, the guide discusses the important plays of all the playwrights included, and the major themes of Modern Irish Drama including: the struggle for independence, the cruelty of poverty, the pains of emigration and exile, the decline of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, the power of religion, the longing for land, and the familial and gender conflicts of a people in transition. Finally, a selected bibliography for the study of Modern Irish Drama is included.

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9780815605256

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Author Information

Sanford Sternlicht teaches English at Syracuse University. He is the author of numerous books. Most recently he coedited with Christopher FitzSimon, New Plays from the Abbey Theatre, 1993- 1995, and has edited the Selected Plays, Poems, and Stories of Padraic Colum.

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