Bram Stoker

The affable and popular theater manager Bram Stoker was born in Clontarf, Ireland, to Abraham and Charlotte Stoker in 1847, into an Irish Protestant (although not Anglo-Irish) family. After a sickly childhood he grew into a robust sportsman, and attended Trinity College Dublin from 1864 to 1866, finally graduating with a BA in 1870. Following in his father’s footsteps, he joined the Irish Civil Service in 1866, where he had the opportunity to travel around Ireland as a clerk of Petty Sessions, while also becoming an unpaid theater reviewer for the Dublin Evening Mail from 1871 to 1878, and publishing his first short story, “The Crystal Cup,” in London Society 1872. This he followed with a short novel, The Primrose Path, and two short stories, “The Chain of Destiny” and “Buried Treasures,” all in the periodical The Shamrock in 1875. In 1878 he left Dublin with his wife Florence to take up the position of acting manager of Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London, and fulfilled this role until Irving’s death in 1905, also managing several American tours. In the earlier part of this period, Stoker managed to publish more fiction, including a first collection of short stories, Under the Sunset (1881), and then his first truly accomplished novel, The Snake’s Pass, set in rural Ireland, in 1890. Short but memorable pieces, “The Squaw” and “The Man from Shorrox,” appeared in periodicals in 1893 and 1894, and then two novels, The Watter’s Mou’, based on his knowledge of Cruden Bay near Aberdeen, and The Shoulder of Shasta, both 1895. Dracula, his most famous work, the product of seven years of research and rewriting, appeared in 1897, followed by a Restoration-era romance of much less merit, Miss Betty, in 1898. The Edwardian era saw his rate of productivity increase with The Mystery of the Sea (1902), another romance set in Cruden Bay, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), a Gothic “mummy” story, The Man (1905), Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving in 1906 (his most successful work in sales terms), and Lady Athlyne and Snowbound (a collection of theatrical short stories), both in 1908. His final, post-theater years were beset with ill health and monetary problems, as he resorted to journalism to supplement his income. However, he also produced the topical Balkan romance The Lady of the Shroud in 1909, and the chaotic The Lair of the White Worm in 1911, before dying the next year, his vibrant personality quietly mourned by London society.

FATAL CONFLICT REFLECTIONS IN MARTIN MCDONAGH'S THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE

This study focuses on the reasons of mother-daughter conflicts in Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane. As the twenty-first century was approaching, a new movement of young playwrights emerged on the UK theatre scene. One of the most controversial and beloved representatives of this wave is Martin McDonagh. The author was born and raised in London as the son of an Irish family. In 1996, McDonagh's first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was staged in Ireland, and then found its place in London and New York, fascinating much attention. Also staged in Turkey, this play of four characters has become the starting point of McDonagh's extraordinary theatrical career. In the play, Maureen, a forty-year-old single woman, still lives with her domineering mother Mag. For years, Maureen has spent her time by cooking, feeding the chickens, and shopping while taking care of her ailing and grumpy mother on her own. In The Beauty Queen of Leenane Maureen and Mag live an isolated life due to their physical location and relationships with each other. Maureen dreams of escaping her mother's house and her town called Leenane. She blames her mother and sisters for her miserable situation. The harsh, rude and hurtful conversations between mother and daughter always continue with conflict. As the play progresses it becomes obvious that this relationship between the two characters is completely disintegrated.

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland

Over 3,800 entries This unique dictionary covers the majority of family names that are established and current in Ireland, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. It establishes reliable and accurate explanations of historical origins (including etymologies), and provides variant spellings and geographical distribution for each name. Additionally, where relevant, it includes genealogical and bibliographical notes for family names that have more than 100 bearers in the 1911 census of Ireland. An extensive introduction gives the history and formation of Irish family names, of Gaelic and English-language origin, and the research methods and sources used to compile the dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland will be of the greatest interest not only to those interested in Irish history, students of the Irish language, genealogists, and geneticists, but also to the general public, both in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora in North America, Australia, and elsewhere.

The mixed race Irish family and everyday negotiations of citizenship

In recent years, the mixed race family constellation has emerged as a persistent feature of Irish societal life. An increase in interracial partnering invariably leads to the presence of white women who are parenting children who are ascribed to another race. Yet, nationalist discourses and the incorporation of jus sanguinis principles in constitutional law have constructed a version of Irishness that ‘others’ and excludes the mixed race person. This paper focuses on the white Irish mother and her mixed race (i.e. black African/white Irish) child (ren), as the majority of mixed race families in the State. In fact, this article sets out to provide a novel perspective vis-à-vis the location of the mixed race family in the context of the exclusionary politics of Irish citizenship and how, through their mothering practices, these white women negotiate and challenge dominant ideologies of belonging on behalf of their children. More specifically, this paper examines the mothers’ attempts to establish their children as equal claimants of rights in the Irish public sphere. By drawing on in-depth interviews with twelve white Irish mothers, this paper reveals that the women’s efforts to publicly articulate their mixed race children as legitimate Irish citizens have been largely denied or even, de-politicized. Rather, at the level of citizenship, the racialized insider-outsider dynamic gets reproduced as the political autonomy of such citizens is constrained by notions of phenotype (and bloodline criteria). I further draw attention to the governmental production of these mixed race subjects as ‘failed’ citizens, who must live out their difference silently in the interstitial spaces of the national framework.

Conflict in corpora

The analysis of conflict in family discourse has often been characterised by ethnographic approaches and/or fine-grained analysis of unique conflict episodes. This article, by contrast, uses a c.175,000-word spoken corpus of Irish family discourse, in conjunction with a corpus pragmatic approach, to explore specific linguistic aspects of conflict discourse. Conflict episodes are identified and analysed in the corpus using a range of linguistic “hooks” (Rühlemann 2010) that have been previously associated with prefacing disagreement such as the marker well, mitigators (I think, I mean, I guess) or the counterargument strategy yes but. The analysis reveals that the family members most frequently use the yeah but strategy in conflict episodes which facilitates immediate disagreement. This strategy is often accompanied by a range of mitigators, predominantly in turn final position, some of which have not been previously identified as indexing conflict sequences.