Staging Europe, staging Ireland: Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov in Irish cultural politics, 1899--1922.

摘要

This study in Irish theater historiography explores possible ways of rethinking the development of Ireland's national drama during the decades immediately preceding the country's independence from Britain by circumventing definitions based solely on traditional binary categories, like Gaelic vs. Anglo-Irish (intellectual tradition and identity), Irish vs. English (language of expression), inward-looking vs. outward-looking (artistic models), or peasant vs. middle and upper class (class and subject matter). As the above categories underscore essentialist politics of representation and presuppose the exclusion of non-conforming elements, rather than their recognition and inclusion, a theatre history based on these categories inevitably produces a hierarchy of authenticity which governs the preference of one definition of national drama and national identity over another.;By reconstructing and analyzing seminal Irish premieres and revivals of plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov at the Theatre of Ireland (1906--1912) and the Irish Theatre Company (1914--1920), this study reveals the critical role of Northern Europe in the search for wider, alternative models for Irish national drama. The study examines the appeal the Scandinavian and Russian traditions had for Irish playwrights and cultural revivalists like Edward Martyn and George Moore, Lennox Robinson and the Cork Realists, the brothers Thomas and John MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett. In Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov, they saw irrefutable proof that dramatists from peripheral European countries, each coming from a marginal literary tradition and writing in 'small' and 'exotic' languages, which were hardly spoken outside of the playwrights' homeland, could compel Europe to recognize the importance of their voice, assigning to them a position of centrality in the European cultural space. The official narrative of Irish national drama has subsequently denied these Europe-oriented cultural figures any representative meaning, labeling them as 'minor' and 'insignificant' from literary point of view, and for the most part omitted them from its historical accounts. This study offers an alternative narrative; investigating artistic and cultural politics which, parallel and complementary to those advocated by W. B. Yeats and Irish-Irelanders, it restores critical access to those sites of openness whose significance was later played down to ensure a coherent, Abbey-centered, narrative of Irish national drama.