Irish Drama, Modernity and the Passion Play [Hardcover]

This book discusses Irish Passion plays (plays that rewrite or parody the story of the Passion of Christ) in modern Irish drama from the Irish Literary Revival to the present day. It offers innovative readings of such canonical plays as J. M. Synges The Playboy of the Western World, W. B. Yeatss Calvary, Brendan Behans The Hostage, Samuel Becketts Endgame, Brian Friels Faith Healer and Tom Murphys Bailegangaire, as well as of less well-known plays by Padraic Pearse, Lady Gregory, G. B. Shaw, Se?n OCasey, Denis Johnston, Samuel Beckett and David Lloyd. Challenging revisionist readings of the rhetoric of blood sacrifice and martyrdom in the Irish Republican tradition, it argues that the Passion play is a powerful political genre which centres on the staged death of the (usually male) protagonist, and makes visible the usually invisible violence perpetrated both by colonial power and by the postcolonial state in the name of modernity.Introduction.- Part I. Synge, Irish modernity and the Passion play.- Chapter 1. Unseen forms of violence.- Part II. The Passion of 1916.- Chapter 2. Anticipating the Rising.- Chapter 3. Framing the Rising.- Chapter 4. Saint Joans unheard voices.- Chapter 5. Re-directing the Passion play.- Part III. After Revolution.- Chapter 6. Reclaiming Robert Emmet.- Chapter 7. Nationalism, abjection and the reinvention of Ireland in Brendan Behans The Hostage.- Chapter 8. Intimate Passions.- Chapter 9. Open mouths.- Part IV. The Artists Passion.- Chapter 10. Torture and Passion.- Chapter 11. The seduction of silence.- Conclusion. Alexandra Poulain is Professor of Irish Studies at Paris 3-Sorbonne nouvelle, France. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary Irish drama, in particular Yeats, Beckett and Tom Murphy.