J.M. Synge : nature, politics, modernism / Seán Hewitt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hewitt, Seán, author.

Contributor:

John Louis Haney Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Synge, J. M. (John Millington), 1871-1909--Themes, motives.

Synge, J. M.

Synge, J. M. (John Millington), 1871-1909--Criticism and interpretation.

Synge, J. M. (John Millington), 1871-1909.

Themes, motives.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

241 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

Summary:

This book is a complete re-assessment of the works of J.M. Synge, one of Ireland's major playwrights. The book offers the first complete consideration of all of Synge's major plays and prose works in nearly 30 years, drawing on extensive archival research to offer innovative new readings. Much work has been done in recent years to uncover Synge's modernity and to emphasise his political consciousness. This book builds on this re-assessment, undertaking a full systematic exploration of Synge's published and unpublished works. Tracing his journey from an early Romanticism through to the more combative modernism of his later work, the book's innovative methodology treats text as process, and considers Synge's reading materials, his drafts, letters, diaries, and journalism, turning up exciting and unexpected revelations. Thus, Synge's engagement with occultism, pantheism, socialism, Darwinism, and even a late reaction against eugenic nationalisms, are all brought into the critical discussion. Breaking new ground in ascertaining the tenets of Synge's spirituality, and his aesthetic and political idealization of harmony with nature, the book also builds on new work in modernist studies, arguing that Synge can be understood as a leftist modernist, exhibiting many of the key concerns of early modernism, but routing them through a socialist politics. Thus, this book is valuable not only to considerations of Synge and the Irish Revival, but also to modernist studies more broadly.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. `An Initiated Mystic': Occultism and Modernization in The Aran Islands

2. The Wicklow Essays: Science, Nature, and the Re-enchanted World

3. `A Black Knot': Temporalities in the One-act Plays

4. Dialectics, Irony, and The Well of the Saints

5. `From the Congested Districts': The Crow and the Golf Ball

6. Degeneration, Eugenics, and The Playboy of the Western World.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-235) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the John Louis Haney Fund.

ISBN:

0198862091

9780198862093

OCLC:

1151495904

Publisher Number:

99989730657