The Profane Book of Irish Comedy

The Profane Book of Irish Comedy
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 349
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781501744013
ISBN-13 : 1501744011
Rating : 4/5 (13 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Profane Book of Irish Comedy by : David Krause

Download or read book The Profane Book of Irish Comedy written by David Krause and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fierce mirth characterizes antic Irish comedy. To the degree to which everyone sympathizes with the need to mock repressive authority, everyone is potentially Irish. It is the Irish dramatists themselves, says David Krause, that are the true authors of the profane book of Irish comedy. The body of literature they have produced desecrates the sacred in Ireland and launches a sardonic attack on the queen of Irish nationalism, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, the old sow who, according to Joyce's tragicomic jest, tries to devour her creative farrow. Krause discusses the major works of fourteen Irish playwrights—Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Dion Boucicault, William Boyle, Paul Vincent Carroll, George Fitzmaurice, Lady Gregory, Denis Johnston, Sean O'Casey, Lennox Robinson, Bernard Shaw, George Shields, J. M. Synge, and W. B. Yeats—and shows the ways in which these works are linked, emotionally and thematically, to early Gaelic literature and the tradition of the mythic pagan playboy Oisin or Usheen. As the last great pagan hero of Ireland, Oisin emerges as an archetype for the many playboys and paycocks of Irish comedy. Oisin was the antithesis of St. Patrick, the first great Christian saint of Ireland, who, condemning pleasure and threatening eternal damnation, came to represent all authority. The bearers of this dark and wild Celtic tradition, which Synge and O'Casey associated with a daimonic or barbarous impulse, laugh irreverently at their own creations. This laughter, the laughter of the culture's mythmakers, brings with it emotional relief, comic catharsis.


The Profane Book of Irish Comedy Related Books

The Profane Book of Irish Comedy
Language: en
Pages: 349
Authors: David Krause
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-06-30 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A fierce mirth characterizes antic Irish comedy. To the degree to which everyone sympathizes with the need to mock repressive authority, everyone is potentially
The Comic Everywoman in Irish Popular Theatre
Language: en
Pages: 136
Authors: Susanne Colleary
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-12-30 - Publisher: Springer

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a comprehensive study of comic women in performance as Irish Political Melodrama from 1890 to 1925. It maps out the performance contexts of the per
The Comic Irishman
Language: en
Pages: 220
Authors: Maureen Waters
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 1984-01-01 - Publisher: SUNY Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Comic Irishman makes heretofore unacknowledged distinctions among different types of comic Irishmen and convincingly casts away the stereotyped version of t
Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction
Language: en
Pages: 257
Authors: Michael L. Storey
Categories: Drama
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-05 - Publisher: CUA Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction offers a comprehensive examination of Irish short stories written over the last eighty years that have treated
Modern Irish Writers
Language: en
Pages: 482
Authors: Alexander G. Gonzalez
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 1997-08-26 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

While the Irish Literary Revival began around 1885 and ended somewhere between 1925 and 1940, the Irish Renaissance has continued to the present day and shows n