Theatre and Residual Culture J.M. Synge and Pre-Christian Ireland [Hardcover]

This book considers the cultural residue from pre-Christian Ireland in Synges plays and performances. By dramatising a residual culture in front of a predominantly modern and political Irish Catholic middle class audience, the book argues that Synge attempted to offer an alternative understanding of what it meant to be modern at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book draws extensively on Synges archive to demonstrate how pre-Christian residual culture informed not just how he wrote and staged pre-Christian beliefs, but also how he thought about an older, almost forgotten culture that Catholic Ireland desperately wanted to forget. Each of Synges plays is considered in an individual chapter, and they identify how Synges dramaturgy was informed by pre-Christian beliefs of animism, pantheism, folklore, superstition and magical ritual.1. Introduction.- 2. The Emergence of the Playwright.- 3. Flagrant Heathens.- 4. A Christless Creed.- 5. The Cries of Pagan Desperation.- 6. A Sort of Saint.- 7. Christy and the Changeling.- 8. Conclusion. The book is extremely well documented, drawing on extensive archival material and proposing careful readings of the philosophical texts which had a lasting influence on Synges writings, prominent amongst which is James Frazers The Golden Bough (1890). In historicizing Synges plays and taking folk belief seriously, Collinss book offers an important contribution to postcolonial readings of the Irish Literary Revival and will be of enduring interest to scholars of Synge and of Edwardian Ireland. (H?l?ne Lecossois, Theatre Research International, Vol. 42, (3), October, 2017)