Modernism and Irish Theatre 1900–1940

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Cave
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Sean O'casey ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Key Features

Modernism, defined here initially in its key features across the art forms, was a strong countercurrent to the dominant style of realism in Irish theatre in the first decades of the twentieth century. This is particularly evident in the dance dramas of W. B. Yeats and his other experiments with non-realist dramatic forms. Séan O’Casey, in his controversial playThe Silver Tassieand later works, drew on the bold techniques of expressionism. Denis Johnston, who emerged as a playwright from the 1920s Dublin Drama League, gave the Gate Theatre one of its key early successes inThe Old Lady Says No!. And it was in the Gate, with Hilton Edwards as director and Michéal Mac Liammóir as designer and actor, that Irish audiences were exposed to the internationally influential style of presentational staging.

scholarly journals Menace and Play

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamonn Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Sean O'casey ◽  
Brian Friel ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
Dramatic Practice ◽  
Martin Mcdonagh

Irish Drama has changed radically over the last century, and especially during the last decade of the twentieth century. Globally, the state of Irish theatre has never seemed healthier. The vibrancy and recent accomplishments, in terms of box office and awards, of Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Frank McGuinness, Marina Carr, Marie Jones, and of course Brian Friel bear this out. Just as clearly, there has been a dissolution of a dramatic practice that goes back to J.M. Synge and Sean O'Casey, that consolidated in the late 1950s and early 60s, and that later matured and modified, while retaining reasonably consistent artistic aspirations and fundamentals. I map this transition by portraying what seems to me to be shared dramaturgical conventions of an older male generation and the demise or depreciation of those practices (there is still residual evidence of it) in a younger one. I will argue that it is a shift from a post-colonial to a postmodern consciousness that accounts for much of the changes. To make my case, I will work primarily with Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and Frank McGuinness and offset them against Sebastian Barry, Conor McPherson, Martin McDonagh and Mark O'Rowe.

Katherine Mansfield and Translation

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Katherine Mansfield ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Specific Interest ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Critical Interest

Our understanding of Anglophone modernism has been transformed by recent critical interest in translation. The central place of translation in the circulation of aesthetic and political ideas in the early twentieth century has been underlined, for example, as well as translation’s place in the creative and poetic dynamics of key modernist texts. This volume of Katherine Mansfield Studies offers a timely assessment of Mansfield’s place in such exchanges. As a reviewer, she developed a specific interest in literatures in translation, as well as showing a keen awareness of the translator’s presence in the text. Throughout her life, Mansfield engaged with new literary texts through translation, either translating proficiently herself, or working alongside a co-translator to explore the semantic and stylistic challenges of partially known languages. The metaphorical resonances of translating, transition and marginality also remain key features of her writing throughout her life. Meanwhile, her enduring popularity abroad is ensured by translations of her works, all of which reveal sociological and even ideological agendas of their own, an inevitable reflection of individual translators’ readings of her works, and the literary traditions of the new country and language of reception. The contributions to this volume refine and extend our appreciation of her specifically trans-linguistic and trans-literary lives. They illuminate the specific and more general influences of translation on Mansfield’s evolving technique and, jointly, they reveal the importance of translation on her literary language, as well as for her own particular brand of modernism.

Introduction

Willy Ley ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared S. Buss
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Complex Argument ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Romantic Science

The introduction provides an overview of Ley’s life and importance. It also presents a complex argument about the key features of romantic, popular science during the twentieth century. The section makes interdisciplinary connections between German and American romantic science, popular science, and media studies, while providing a brief introduction to Ley, his legacy, and the themes of the book.

Theorizing Adaptation in the Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-138
Author(s):  
Kamilla Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Recording Device ◽  
Medium Specificity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Copyright Laws ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Literature And Film

Chapter 3 discusses how, just as new copyright laws were legitimizing intermedial adaptations, modernist theories drastically diminished the theoretical fortunes of adaptation with their rejection of the past and celebration of the new. Modernism shattered adaptation into allusions: studying allusions as adaptations would indubitably help to restore the theoretical fortunes of adaptation under modernism. Modernism’s hostility to mass culture was often aimed at adaptation: even theorists valorizing other popular cultural forms opposed it. Requiring film to dissociate from other art forms in order to emerge as an art in its own right, rather than as a craft or a recording device for other arts, medium specificity theory undermined adaptation in literature-and-film studies. Affecting all kinds of adaptation, the formalist turn diminished the theoretical fortunes of adaptation by rejecting the cultural theories that had valorized adaptation in prior centuries. Joined to medium specificity theories and structuralist semiotics, intermedial adaptation became not only aesthetically undesirable but also theoretically impossible under theories that content cannot separate from form to appear in another medium. With the advent of the theoretical turn in the humanities, adaptation became a battleground upon which theoretical wars were fought, battles that, paradoxically, foregrounded it. By the 1990s, adaptation was becoming an established, if divided, diasporic field, engaging a panoply of theories.

Introduction

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edoardo Manarini
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Specific Section

The introduction outlines the subject of the research. One of the most relevant early medieval elite kinship groups of the Italian kingdom were the Hucpoldings, named after that Hucpold who had held the office of count palatine under Louis II. Key features of the research are the long chronological range and the wide geographical area investigated. The chapter then retraces the main historiographical steps taken in investigations of early medieval kinship groups from the second half of the twentieth century until the latest developments. A specific section is dedicated to the presentation and analysis of the documentary and narrative sources used in this research.

scholarly journals From Motherhood to Fatherhood: The Eclipse of Reason in the Taviani Brothers’ Tu ridi

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Manuela Gieri
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
San Lorenzo ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Made In

The paper presents an in-depth analysis of Tu ridi, a free adaptation of some of Luigi Pirandello’s short stories, realized by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani in 1998. Within a filmography largely characterized by an attention to the historical, social, and political transformations that Italy experienced over the second half of the twentieth century, special attention should be paid to the films the Tavianis made in a close dialogue with literature, a closeness that has always been particularly fortunate for both art forms. Over the decades, they have recurrently practised the art of adaptation bringing to the screen, among other literary texts, several of Luigi Pirandello’s short stories in films such as Tu ridi, and Kaos (1984). Unquestionably, literature has often been instrumental for the Tavianis’ investigation of reality, and my analysis will place in a close dialogue Tu ridi, their 1982 film La notte di San Lorenzo and, last but not least, Kaos, since in all tthree works the Tavianis’ agenda seems to be the same: to interrogate and overturn official historical discourse in order to unveil the complex and multifaceted truth that lies under the surface of things, and thus to rewrite the very narration about Neorealism and its overcoming.

scholarly journals New Prospects for Information Theory in Arts Research

Leonardo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-280
Author(s):  
Alan Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Similarity Measure ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
Computing Systems ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Normalized Compression Distance ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Potential Success

Information Theory provoked the interest of arts researchers from its inception in the mid-twentieth century but failed to produce the expected impact, partly because the data and computing systems required were not available. With the modern availability of data from public collections and sophisticated software, there is renewed interest in Information Theory. Successful application in the analysis of music implies potential success in other art forms also. The author gives an illustrative example, applying the Information-Theoretic similarity measure normalized compression distance with the aim of ranking paintings in a large collection by their conventionality.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
Performance Examining ◽  
Foundational Work ◽  
Bernard Shaw ◽  
The Impact

The familiar narrative in this field has focused on playwrights: from the foundational work of W. B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory, and J. M. Synge of the early twentieth-century national theatre movement to contemporary figures such as Martin McDonagh, Marina Carr, and Enda Walsh, sometimes including Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett. These playwrights are all given detailed analysis in this volume, while extending the conspectus to the full phenomenon of modern Irish theatre. Two sections of the book are devoted to performance, examining the neglected work of directors and designers, as well as exploring acting styles and playing spaces. While the Abbey, as Ireland’s national theatre, has been of central importance, individual chapters bring out the contesting voices of women in a male-dominated arena, the position of Irish-language theatre, and ‘little theatres’ that challenged the hegemony of the Abbey. The middle of the twentieth century saw what amounted to a new revival of Irish drama with the emergence of a generation of playwrights responding in innovative ways to a modernizing Ireland, again diversified by the establishment of regional companies and alternative dramaturgical directions from the 1970s. The contemporary period in Irish theatre has featured a movement beyond scripted plays to more experimental work. The impact and interactions of Irish theatre are finally placed within the wider world of the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. The forty-one chapters of the volume offer the most comprehensive analysis to date of modern Irish theatre.

Shadow and Substance

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Sihra
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Substance P ◽  
First Century ◽  
Main Stage ◽  
Women Playwrights ◽  
Irish Woman ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Theatre Company

In spite of the very important role of women in the development of Irish theatre through the twentieth century, their contribution has continued to be marginalized, with ‘women’s drama’ set off against an implicit male norm. This was still obvious in the Abbey Theatre’s centenary programme, in which no play by a woman featured on the theatre’s main stage. The work of Charabanc Theatre Company, a women’s collective, and the highly successful plays of Marie Jones emerging from that company can be contrasted with the male-dominated Field Day in terms of a disparity of critical attention. Marina Carr, the Irish woman playwright best known internationally, in spite of the strong gender concerns of her plays, has been reluctant to identify herself as ‘feminist’ because of its associations. It has only been in the twenty-first century that the work of women playwrights and directors has been accepted as part of mainstream theatre .

Roundtable: ‘Re-imagining Twentieth-Century Irish Theatre’

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian R. Walsh ◽  
Rhona Trench ◽  
Lionel Pilkington ◽  
Eamonn Jordan ◽  
Paige Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Irish Society ◽  
Roundtable Discussion ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University

Following on from a roundtable discussion that took place at the 2013 Conference of the Irish Society of Theatre Research at the University of London, Birkbeck, this essay presents reflections on the developments in scholarship on twentieth-century Irish theatre and possible new directions or approaches to the subject by four eminent theatre scholars: Rhona Trench, Lionel Pilkington, Eamonn Jordan, and Paige Reynolds. The participants were asked to respond to Christopher Murray's influential 1997 publication Twentieth Century Irish Theatre: Mirror up to Nation as a prompt to organize the discussion.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document