Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge - Hardcover

Lecossois, Hélène

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1108487793 ISBN 13: 9781108487795

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2020

Synopsis

Irish Revivalist playwright J. M. Synge is often regarded as a realist. Yet what happens when his work is analysed through wider performance studies and situated alongside less familiar historical contexts? By addressing this question, Hélène Lecossois offers new and valuable perspectives on Synge's plays while at the same time engaging with the complexity of his treatment of a range of performance practices – from keening at rural funerals to the performances of 'native villagers' in the entertainment section of International Exhibitions. What emerges from her study is a dramatist acutely aware of the ability of theatre in performance to counteract relentless forward-moving narratives of modernity. Through detailed, contextualized case studies, the book simultaneously makes meaningful contributions to performance studies and opens up theoretical questions of performance relating to the status of the object on stage, the body on stage and theatrical time.

About this title

About the Author

Hélène Lecossois is Professor of Irish Literary Studies at Université de Lille, France. Specialising in Irish theatre and performance, Hélène is the author of Endgame de Samuel Beckett (2009), and of various essays in Beckett Today, Études irlandaises, Sillages critiques and the 2014 edited collection Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination. She was 2014 recipient of the Moore Institute Fellowship (NUI Galway).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108487793
• ISBN 13: 9781108487795
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 250