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The Role of Gender in Selected Irish Plays
Pichrtová, Lenka ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee)
The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the turbulent changes within the Irish society affected the face of modern Irish drama. Ireland, originally a rural country bound by religious dogmas and its own colonial past, underwent a considerable amount of development in the latter half of the 20th century; it was predominantly manifested through an increased Celtic Tiger economic prosperity and decreasing influence of the Catholic Church. The central interest of Irish culture has always been the effort to define a unifying national metanarrative and identity. In the beginning of the 20th century this desire was motivated by a struggle to establish a vital opposition between Ireland and Great Britain and definitely renounce its depreciating status of a former colony. However, in the second half of the 20th century the discrepancy between the nationalist ideology driven idea of Irish identity (whose value has always been questionable to say the least) and its modern reality became unbridgeable. The introduction of this thesis is dedicated to summarizing the changes within the Irish society in the course of the 20th century. A brief characterization of this turbulent development should justify the urge of more recent artists to re-formulate the Irish national metanarrative to suit the 20th century...
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Contemporary culture vs. Irishness in the plays of Martin McDonagh
Pichrtová, Lenka ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
Thirteen years ago, in 1997, the theatrical community around the world was for the first time amazed by the new emerging persona of European drama, Martin McDonagh (1970), who made a spectacular debut by his play The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1996. This work was followed by three more pieces in quick succession, further confirming McDonagh's status as a rising star. The author has to date publicly produced seven plays which quickly found their way from Great Britain and Ireland into the whole world and enjoyed tremendous success everywhere they were performed. The appearance of a new persona naturally invited a large amount of attention and sometimes very heated criticism; the core debate focuses mainly on the most prominent and shocking aspects of McDonagh's plays - namely violence, emotional vacuum, authenticity and alleged misrepresentation of Irishness. In its introductory contextual part, this thesis would like to illuminate McDonagh's status as an Irish writer, try to place him within the Irish dramatic tradition and provide a comparison with some of his predecessors, namely J. M. Synge and his Playboy of the Western World. This chapter of the thesis will equally concentrate on major themes and means of representing Irishness in the plays and on features connecting McDonagh to other Irish...
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