Selected Plays of Irish Playwright Teresa Deevy, 1894-1963

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Year:
Pages:276
ISBN:0-7734-6635-5
978-0-7734-6635-7
Price:$199.95 + shipping
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This volume is a welcome re-issuing of the dramatic writings of one of Ireland’s most important women writers. Teresa Deevy’s plays provided a viable female viewpoint on the tensions between individual selfhood and nationhood in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s. This volume includes her most critically acclaimed writing for Dublin’s Abbey Theatre: The King of Spain’s Daughter, Katie Roche and The Wild Goose. It also publishes, for the first time, her compelling radio drama, Supreme Dominion. Deevy’s plays have continued to attract popular interest since her death in 1963, and her importance in terms of modern theatre, Irish studies, and women’s studies cannot be underestimated.

Reviews

“…of crucial importance in terms of the history and development of theatre and of women’s writing in post-Independence Ireland. Moreover, as the bibliography indicates, Deevy’s drama, even though it has been neglected, has continued to be a significant presence and to be valued by those in touch with the undercurrents of cultural history in Ireland. The publication of this edition of Deevy’s plays will serve several vital functions: it will at once make the work of this author available to a wider audience and also contextualize and mediate it for a new readership. Dr. Walshe’s introduction deftly traces the vagaries of Deevy’s career and makes evident the extent to which the cultural agendas of institutions such as the Abbey Theatre and the oppressive gender politics of mid-twentieth–century Ireland blighted the progress of emergent women writers….provides an accessible, informed, and balanced account of her writing and a useful and compelling overview of its reception…. This edition will be an indispensable work for scholars in the field of Irish drama and theatre but will also be of vital interest to those undertaking research in the ever-growing area of Irish Studies. It will also be useful and enlightening for scholars in the field of Women’s Studies.” – Dr. Anne Fogarty, National University of Ireland, Dublin

“The absence of an edition of Deevy’s work has been a major lacuna in the publishing of Irish twentieth-century literature…. Publishing Deevy is an important feminist recovery project, which will expand and alter scholars’ current impressions of the canon of Irish drama; it is also a significant contribution towards deepening the study of the narrow and repressive ideology of the Irish Republic of the ‘thirties to the ‘fifties.” – Dr. Patricia Coughlan, University College Cork, Ireland

Table of Contents

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Professor Shaun Richards
1. Ineffable Longings: the Plays of Teresa Deevy; Bibliography
2. The King of Spain’s Daughter
3. Katie Roche
4. The Wild Goose
5. Supreme Dominion

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