The feast of famine : the plays of Frank McGuinness

Author(s)

• Jordan, Eamonn

Bibliographic Information

The feast of famine : the plays of Frank McGuinness

Eamonn Jordan

Peter Lang, c1997

• US : pbk.

Note

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--University College, Dublin

Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-206) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This is a critical evaluation of the Northern Irish playwright Frank McGuinness, best known for the plays "Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme" and "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me". Memory, history, myth, identity and performance are recurring themes in McGuinness's drama. His work is formally inventive, demanding, generous and aggressive in a way that makes his theatre a confrontational, salient and enlighted-ning experience. The title of this text "The Feast of Famine" captures the confluence of contradictory forces at play in McGuinness's work: the celebratory and communal notions of festivity and the destructive intensity of famine. This study places these dynamic energies within a carnivalesque consciousness which is transgressive and highly theatrical.

Table of Contents

• The early plays - discoveries
• "Observe the Sons of Ulster" - legacy and commemoration
• "Innocence" - the political imagination
• "Carthaginians" - memory recovered
• translations - other voices
• "Mary and Lizzie" - a lost history
• "The Bread Man" - isolation and desire
• "Someone who'll watch over me" - culture and fantasy.

by "Nielsen BookData"

• NCID: BA37578191
• ISBN:
  • 3906757714
  • 0820434140
• LCCN: 97017490
• Country Code: sz
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Bern ; New York
• Pages/Volumes: xxv, 210 p.
• Size: 23 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : PR6063.C515
  • DC21 : 822/.914
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : McGuinness, Frank -- Criticism and interpretation
  • LCSH : Northern Ireland -- Intellectual life -- 20th century