Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries) - Hardcover

Clare, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1137543558 ISBN 13: 9781137543554

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Synopsis

Although Bernard Shaw is often regarded as a writer of English society plays, his formative years in Ireland deeply influenced his work for the stage. His use of Irish-born, Irish Diasporic, Surrogate Irish, and Stage English characters reveals the degree to which he maintained a strongly Irish perspective throughout his life. Shaw's Irish-born characters betray his Irish reverse snobbery; he uses them to suggest that it is better to come from a marginalized background than a privileged one. Some of his English and American characters (including Henry Higgins) derive their strengths - and some of their weaknesses - from their Irish cultural backgrounds, and Shaw occasionally endows non-Irish characters (such as Saint Joan) with Irish qualities and then uses them as crypto-Irish foils in their dealings with English characters. Shaw uses Stage English characters in his three Irish plays to critique the English for what he sees as their national flaws.

About this title

Review:

"Bernard Shaw's Irish Outlook is an important, original, well-written, critically incisive, and long overdue study of Bernard Shaw's Irishness . . . It is the first single-authored volume exclusively focused on the subject of Shaw and Irishness. It will be joined by others in time, but it is unlikely to be bettered." Anthony Roche, Professor, University College Dublin, Ireland

"David Clare's radical analysis, delivered in subtle prose, constitutes a challenge to Shavians and to Hibernophiles to rethink some of their most basic assumptions. A bracing and enjoyable read." Declan Kiberd, Professor, University of Notre Dame, USA

"Clare wonderfully illuminates the degree to which Shaw's Irish identity remained the great constant in his protean career." Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times

"We know that Ireland is a presence in some of Shaw's plays - John Bull's Other Island, most famously. David Clare's fascinating and important study gives us new ways to think about such works but also sheds new light on many of Shaw's most famous dramas, including Pygmalion and Saint Joan. As readable as it is insightful, this book will be of wide interest to scholars of Shaw, Irish literature, and theatre studies." Patrick Lonergan, Professor, National University of Ireland, Galway

About the Author:

David Clare is an Irish Research Council-funded postdoctoral research fellow at the Moore Institute at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His work has been published in the Irish Studies Review, the New Hibernia Review, the Irish University Review, Studies: An Irish Quarterly, and Emerging Perspectives. He holds an MA and a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin, Ireland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1137543558
• ISBN 13: 9781137543554
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 217