The Profane Book of Irish Comedy

David Krause

Published by Cornell University Press 1982

The Profane Book of Irish Comedy

David Krause

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501744013

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

David Krause is Professor of English at Brown University. He is the editor of The Letters of Sean O'Casey and the author of two books on O'Casey and his work.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	7
PREFACE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
Chapter 1. THE BARBAROUS SYMPATHIES OF ANTIC IRISH COMEDY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Chapter 2. THE HIDDEN OISÍN Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Chapter 3. THE COMIC DESECRATION OF Ireland’s household gods Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Chapter 4. MANNERS AND MORALS IN IRISH COMEDY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Chapter 5. THE VICTORY OF COMIC DEFEAT Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
NOTES AND COMMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 352
Keywords: Irish Studies; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: June 30, 2019
ISBN: 9781501744013