The Golden Thread
Irish Women Playwrights, Volume 1 (1716-1992)
Published on 1. March 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
344 pages
978-1-80207-372-0 (ISBN)
Description
Sold as a multi-volume set - the individual volumes are also available for purchase.
This two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women's playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance.
Volume One covers plays by Irish women playwrights written between 1716 to 1992, and seeks to address and redress the historic absence of Irish female playwrights in theatre histories. Highlighting the work of nine women playwrights from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as thirteen of the twentieth century's key writers, the chapters in this volume explore such varied themes as the impact of space and place on identity, women's strategic use of genre, and theatrical responses to shifts in Irish politics and culture.
CONTRIBUTORS: Conrad Brunstroem, David Clare, Thomas Conway, Marguerite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Shirley-Anne Godfrey, Una Kealy, Sonja Lawrenson, Cathy Leeney, Marc Mac Lochlainn, Kate McCarthy, Fiona McDonagh, Deirdre McFeely, Megan W. Minogue, Ciara Moloney, Justine Nakase, Patricia O'Beirne, Kevin O'Connor, Ciara O'Dowd, Cliona O Gallchoir, Anna Pilz, Emilie Pine, Ruud van den Beuken, Feargal Whelan
**
This two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women's playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance.
Volume One covers plays by Irish women playwrights written between 1716 to 1992, and seeks to address and redress the historic absence of Irish female playwrights in theatre histories. Highlighting the work of nine women playwrights from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as thirteen of the twentieth century's key writers, the chapters in this volume explore such varied themes as the impact of space and place on identity, women's strategic use of genre, and theatrical responses to shifts in Irish politics and culture.
CONTRIBUTORS: Conrad Brunstroem, David Clare, Thomas Conway, Marguerite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Shirley-Anne Godfrey, Una Kealy, Sonja Lawrenson, Cathy Leeney, Marc Mac Lochlainn, Kate McCarthy, Fiona McDonagh, Deirdre McFeely, Megan W. Minogue, Ciara Moloney, Justine Nakase, Patricia O'Beirne, Kevin O'Connor, Ciara O'Dowd, Cliona O Gallchoir, Anna Pilz, Emilie Pine, Ruud van den Beuken, Feargal Whelan
**
Reviews / Votes
'Spanning from the eighteenth-century to the present day, The Golden Thread brings together the work of leading scholars in Irish theatre and women's writing with that of theatre practitioners to recover the often-hidden contributions of women playwrights. The collection develops a counter-canon of Irish playwrights that examines issues of class, sexuality, and disability.'Colleen English, The New Books Network 'This is one of those indispensable works that will influence the future of performance studies and feminist criticism. The number and variety of voices on display, the effort in the reconstruction of the canon by adding women playwrights who had been erased in the past, and the declared ambition to draw attention to and create the conditions for revivals and publications of plays created by contemporary women playwrights make this extensive compilation more than recommendable. [....] All in all, a very enjoyable edition, which makes for a rewarding read and provides essential information.'
Maria Gavina-Costero, Estudios Irlandeses 'In a word, The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716-2016... is superb. This two-volume collection showcases writers familiar and less familiar, offers valuable context and incisive textual readings, attends to performance as well as stagecraft, and ranges among historical periods and critical approaches.'
Prof. Paige Reynolds, English Studies 'The Golden Thread is an ambitious, richly textured and multifaceted research piece that opens up the field of Irish theatre studies in most fruitful ways. It offers a robust counteracting to the under-representation of Irish women playwrights in the canon and is a strong incentive for producers to revive their work... a most valuable book for anyone interested in Irish studies, in Irish theatre studies and also for anyone interested in an alternative history of Irish theatre.' Helene Lecossois, Etudes irlandaises
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Liverpool
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-80207-372-0 (9781802073720)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
David Clare is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Fiona McDonagh is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Justine Nakase is Adjunct Lecturer at Portland State University.
Content
IntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine Nakase
"There's no Place like old England": Space and Identity in Mary Davys's The Northern Heiress; Or, the Humours of York (1716)
Marguerite Corporaal
"Some tender scenes demand the melting tear": Frances Sheridan's The Discovery (1763) and the Vindication of "Sentimental Comedy"
Conrad Brunstroem
Irish Wit on the London Stage: Elizabeth Griffith's The Platonic Wife (1765)
Cliona O Gallchoir
Deceptive Disabilities in Maria Edgeworth's The Double Disguise (1786): Irish Patriotism, Consumption, and the Martial Male Body
Sonja Lawrenson
Reimagining Maria Edgeworth's The Knapsack (1801) for a Contemporary Young Audience
Fiona McDonagh & Marc Mac Lochlainn
Mary Balfour's Kathleen O'Neil (1814): An Expression or Betrayal of Her Ulster Scots Background?
David Clare
Justice and the "Triple Goddess" Archetypes in Anna Maria Hall's Mabel's Curse (1837)
Ciara Moloney
Operas without a Hero: A Comic Trilogy (1876-1879) by Elena Norton and Mary HeyneMark Fitzgerald
"Petticoats!-petticoats! petticoats!": Sartorial Economics in Clotilde Graves's A Mother of Three (1896)
Justine Nakase
From Gort to Antarctica: Lady Gregory's Audiences and The Rising of the Moon (1903)
Anna Pilz
Lady Gregory's Grania (1912): Myth and Mythology
Shirley-Anne Godfrey
"You have let the play go to pieces": Geraldine Cummins and Susanne R. Day's Fox and Geese (1917) and the Hegemony of the Early Abbey Theatre
Thomas Conway
"Something left over from the Eighteenth Century, undergoing a slow process of decay": The Impotence of the Ascendancy in Mary Manning's Youth's the Season-? (1931)
Ruud van den Beuken
Shape Shifting the Silence: An Analysis of Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017) by Amanda Coogan in Collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, an Appropriation of Teresa Deevy's The King of Spain's Daughter (1935)
Una Kealy & Kate McCarthy
The Premiere Staging of Mount Prospect (1940) by Elizabeth Connor (the Pen Name of Una Troy) at the Abbey Theatre
Ciara O'Dowd
Corruption and Socio-Political Tensions in Christine Longford's Tankardstown (1948)
Kevin O'Connor
Social Class, Space, and Containment in 1950s Ireland: Maura Laverty's "Dublin Trilogy" (1951-1952)
Cathy Leeney & Deirdre McFeely
Mairead Ni Ghrada's An Triail/On Trial (1964): Hiding Hypocrisy in Plain Sight
Feargal Whelan
Christina Reid: Acts of Memory in Tea in a China Cup (1983), The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), and My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1989)
Emilie Pine
Anne Devlin: Depicting a Gendered Journey: Men and Women on The Long March (1984)
Megan W. Minogue
A Partial Eclipse: The Role of the Religious in Patricia Burke Brogan's Eclipsed (1988 / 1992)
Patricia O'Beirne
Coda - What the Woman Sees: Waking Up to Feminist Aesthetics
Cathy Leeney
"There's no Place like old England": Space and Identity in Mary Davys's The Northern Heiress; Or, the Humours of York (1716)
Marguerite Corporaal
"Some tender scenes demand the melting tear": Frances Sheridan's The Discovery (1763) and the Vindication of "Sentimental Comedy"
Conrad Brunstroem
Irish Wit on the London Stage: Elizabeth Griffith's The Platonic Wife (1765)
Cliona O Gallchoir
Deceptive Disabilities in Maria Edgeworth's The Double Disguise (1786): Irish Patriotism, Consumption, and the Martial Male Body
Sonja Lawrenson
Reimagining Maria Edgeworth's The Knapsack (1801) for a Contemporary Young Audience
Fiona McDonagh & Marc Mac Lochlainn
Mary Balfour's Kathleen O'Neil (1814): An Expression or Betrayal of Her Ulster Scots Background?
David Clare
Justice and the "Triple Goddess" Archetypes in Anna Maria Hall's Mabel's Curse (1837)
Ciara Moloney
Operas without a Hero: A Comic Trilogy (1876-1879) by Elena Norton and Mary HeyneMark Fitzgerald
"Petticoats!-petticoats! petticoats!": Sartorial Economics in Clotilde Graves's A Mother of Three (1896)
Justine Nakase
From Gort to Antarctica: Lady Gregory's Audiences and The Rising of the Moon (1903)
Anna Pilz
Lady Gregory's Grania (1912): Myth and Mythology
Shirley-Anne Godfrey
"You have let the play go to pieces": Geraldine Cummins and Susanne R. Day's Fox and Geese (1917) and the Hegemony of the Early Abbey Theatre
Thomas Conway
"Something left over from the Eighteenth Century, undergoing a slow process of decay": The Impotence of the Ascendancy in Mary Manning's Youth's the Season-? (1931)
Ruud van den Beuken
Shape Shifting the Silence: An Analysis of Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017) by Amanda Coogan in Collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, an Appropriation of Teresa Deevy's The King of Spain's Daughter (1935)
Una Kealy & Kate McCarthy
The Premiere Staging of Mount Prospect (1940) by Elizabeth Connor (the Pen Name of Una Troy) at the Abbey Theatre
Ciara O'Dowd
Corruption and Socio-Political Tensions in Christine Longford's Tankardstown (1948)
Kevin O'Connor
Social Class, Space, and Containment in 1950s Ireland: Maura Laverty's "Dublin Trilogy" (1951-1952)
Cathy Leeney & Deirdre McFeely
Mairead Ni Ghrada's An Triail/On Trial (1964): Hiding Hypocrisy in Plain Sight
Feargal Whelan
Christina Reid: Acts of Memory in Tea in a China Cup (1983), The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), and My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1989)
Emilie Pine
Anne Devlin: Depicting a Gendered Journey: Men and Women on The Long March (1984)
Megan W. Minogue
A Partial Eclipse: The Role of the Religious in Patricia Burke Brogan's Eclipsed (1988 / 1992)
Patricia O'Beirne
Coda - What the Woman Sees: Waking Up to Feminist Aesthetics
Cathy Leeney