Overview

Marina Carr and Greek Tragedy examines the feminist transposition of Greek tragedy in the theatre of the contemporary Irish dramatist Marina Carr. Through a comparison of the plays based on classical drama with their ancient models, it investigates Carr’s transformation not only of the narrative but also of the form of Greek tragedy. As a religious and political institution of the 5th-century Athenian democracy, tragedy endorsed the sexist oppression of women. Indeed, the construction of female characters in Greek tragedy was entirely disconnected from the experience of womanhood lived by real women in order to embody the patriarchal values of Athenian democracy. Whether praised for their passivity or demonized for showing unnatural agency and subjectivity, women in Greek tragedy were conceived to (re)assert the supremacy of men. Carr’s theatre stands in stark opposition to such a purpose. Focusing on women’s struggle to achieve agency and subjectivity in a male-dominated world, her plays show the diversity of experiencing womanhood and sexist oppression in the Republic of Ireland, and the Western societies more generally. Yet, Carr’s enduring conversation with the classics in her theatre demonstrates the feminist willingness to alter the founding myths of Western civilisation to advocate for gender equality.

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9781032288871

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Salomé Paul completed a PhD in Drama Studies from University College Dublin and in Comparative Literature from Sorbonne University in 2020. She was awarded the French Government Medal and the National University of Ireland Prize for Distinction in Collaborative Degrees for her doctoral research in 2021. She was the recipient of the Two-Year Postdoctoral Scheme of the Irish Research Council from 2020 to 2022. During that period of time, she was a postdoctoral fellow in Drama Studies at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses on transpositions of Greek tragedy in European modern and contemporary stages.

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