Spectrality in Dermot Bolger’s The Townlands of Brazil and Owen McCafferty’s Quietly: A Comparative Approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/ths.2017.010Keywords
Dermot Bolger, haunting, Owen McCafferty, Quietly, spectrality, The Townlands of BrazilAbstract
The essay offers a juxtaposition of selected readings of the concepts of spectrality in two contemporary Irish plays: Quietly (2012) by Owen McCafferty and The Townlands of Brazil (2006) by Dermot Bolger. The former apparently depicts a political ghost-like encounter in a Belfast pub. The latter deals with hardships and dilemmas experienced by those who have lived in Ballymun, a Dublin residential area developed to solve the problem of poverty in the city. Both plays have already gained critical acclaim and both feature Poles whose spectrality lends itself to postcolonial, gendered, and geo-dramatic hermeneutics. However, the processes of “haunting” and “being haunted” discernible in the plays can be interpreted in other dimensions of the spectral experiences shared by Polish and Irish characters, and these will be addressed in the article.References
Bastiat, B. (2016). “Quietly (2012) by Owen McCafferty: Towards a Quiet Reconciliation?” In: E. Epinoux & F. Healy, eds. Post Celtic Tiger Ireland: Exploring New Cultural Spaces. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. 31–41.
Bolger, D. (2006). The Townlands of Brazil. In: D. Bolger. 2010. The Ballymun Trilogy. Dublin: New Island. 105–196.
Eco, U. (1990). Interpretation and Overinterpretation: World, History, Texts. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, March 7 and 8, 1990. http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/ato-z/e/Eco_91.pdf. 03.05.2017.
Gregg, S. (2015). Shibboleth. London: Nick Hern Books Limited.
Lavan, R. (2013). Quietly at the Edinburgh Fringe. The Oxonian Review. http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/quietly-at-the-edinburgh-fringe/. 01.09.2016.
Lorek-Jezińska, E. (2013). Hauntology and Intertextuality in Contemporary British Drama by Women Playwrights. Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press.
Malone, M. & O’Sullivan, C. (2013). “The Stage and the City: Narrative, Identity and Place in Dermot Bolger’s The Ballymun Trilogy (2004–2008).” In: K. Gallagher & J. Neelands, eds. Drama and Theatre in Urban Contexts. Abingdon: Routledge. 85–100.
McCafferty, O. (2014). Quietly. London–Dublin: Faber and Faber / The Abbey Theatre.
McIvor, C. (2014). “White Irish-born Playwrights and the Immigrant Experience Onstage.” In: P. Villar-Argáiz, ed. Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland: The Immigrant in Contemporary Irish Literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press. N.p.
Morash, C. (2004). A History of Irish Theatre, 1601–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morash, C. & Richards, S. (2013). Mapping Irish Theatre: Theories of Space and Place. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ojrzyńska, K. (2016). “‘Landscapes change, our faces and nationalities change…. but nothing else changes’: Dramatic Depictions of Polish Post-EU Accession Migrants to the British Isles.” In: J. Kruczkowska & P. Mirowska, eds. Diversity and Homogeneity: The Politics of Nation, Ethnicity and Gender. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 50–66.
The Polish Diaspora in the UK and Ireland: Migration in Literature and Culture since 2004. Culture / Ireland. http://archiwum-emigracja.uni.lodz.pl/en/?page_id=481. 01.09.2016.
Więckowska, K. (2014). Spectres of Men: Masculinity, Crisis and British Literature. Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press.
Wolfreys, J. (2013). “Spectrality.” In: W. Hughes, D. Punter & A. Smith, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Gothic. 2013. http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405182904_chunk_g978140518290421_ss1-18. 01.09.2016.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 597
Number of citations: 0