The Aran Islands (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Synge, J.M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140184325 ISBN 13: 9780140184327

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1992

Synopsis

In 1907 J. M. Synge achieved both notoriety and lasting fame with The Playboy of the Western World. The Aran Islands, published in the same year, records his visits to the islands in 1898-1901, when he was gathering the folklore and anecdotes out of which he forged The Playboy and his other major dramas.

Yet this book is much more than a stage in the evolution of Synge the dramatist. As Tim Robinson explains in his introduction, "If Ireland is intriguing as being an island off the west of Europe, then Aran, as an island off the west of Ireland, is still more so; it is Ireland raised to the power of two." Towards the end of the last century Irish nationalists came to identify the area as the country's uncorrupted heart, the repository of its ancient language, culture and spiritual values. It was for these reasons that Yeats suggested Synge visit the islands to record their way of life. The result is a passionate exploration of a triangle of contradictory relationships – between an island community still embedded in its ancestral ways but solicited by modernism, a physical environment of ascetic loveliness and savagely unpredictable moods, and Synge himself, formed by modern European thought but in love with the primitive.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"In the late 1890s, John M. Synge, in his middle twenties and unsure of his vocations made his way to Paris intending to study French literature and become a literary critic. There he met William Butler Yeats. The eminent poet advised Synge to drop his involvements with fin de siecle French authors, return to Ireland, and describe a society with which he had some natural connection. Yeats recommended that Synge visit the Aran Islands, primitive and absolutely authentic places about which little had yet been written."--BOOK JACKET. "Synge first traveled to the Aran Islands in 1898. His six-week trip proved to be a wonderfully fruitful and decisive experience. He then went back for part of each summer until 1902. The book that he wrote - and that he called his "first serious piece of work" - was published in 1907. What he learned from his visits to the Aran Islands led directly to the great plays for which he is chiefly remembered."--BOOK JACKET.

About the Author:

A native of Yorkshire, Tim Robinson studied maths at Cambridge and then worked for many years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London, among other places. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands and commenced a multi-decade project of mapping and writing about Aran and Connemara. He is the author of the two-volume Stones of Aran and the Connemara trilogy, each published to great acclaim.

A native of Yorkshire, Tim Robinson studied maths at Cambridge and then worked for many years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London, among other places. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands and commenced a multi-decade project of mapping and writing about Aran and Connemara. He is the author of the two-volume Stones of Aran and the Connemara trilogy, each published to great acclaim.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0140184325
• ISBN 13: 9780140184327
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Robinson Tim