Irish Postcolonial Tragedy

Irish Postcolonial Tragedy: Transfiguring All That Dread explores how tragedy as a dramatic form is used throughout the history of Irish theatre. Having no indigenous theatrical tradition to work from, Irish playwrights had to look to classical and modern forms to shape their own theatre movements. This book asks why playwrights continuously utilize tragedy, a type of drama created by the Greeks circa 500 BCE and which always ends in catastrophe, as a means of critique and therefore inspiring change. Starting with the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899, tragedy has been used and reinvented by Irish playwrights to address their historical and political reality. Irish Postcolonial Tragedy attends to the form in order to better understand how these playwrights reimagined the potential of their nation. With new readings of Yeats, Beckett, and Carr as well as sustained engagement with lesser studied playwrights like Martyn, Ni Ghráda, and Paulin, Irish Postcolonial Tragedy tracks the development of a theatrical mode from the turn of the nineteenth century to the present. In doing so, this book demonstrates the political vision of some of Ireland’s most important playwrights as they critique colonial and neo-colonial forces on the stage.