Levels of education and, consequently, of literacy were low in the Dublin tenements at the beginning of the 20th century, and this facilitated the persistence of an oral tradition which stretched back for thousands of years. This book is an analysis of O'Casey's Abbey plays in the context of the oral culture in which they were set. Because they were powerless in a culture dominated by those who had reaped the advantages of education, the tenement dwellers were dazzled by the apparent magic of literacy and in awe of those who wielded its power. O'Casey uses this to dramatize the ease with which the poor were seduced into what he saw as a bourgeois revolution which brought them nothing but suffering and death.
Although Sean O'Casey's Abbey playsThe Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars--are universally admired for the richness of their language, this is the first authoritative analysis of the plays in relation to the linguistic and political culture at the turn of the century. Levels of education, and consequently, of literacy were low in the Dublin tenements and this facilitated the persistence of an oral tradition which stretched back for thousands of years. What might strike the modern reader as extravagant in the language of O'Casey's characters would be quite normal in an oral community where all communication was performative.
Because they were powerless in a culture dominated by those who had reaped the advantages of education, the tenement dwellers were dazzled by the apparent magic of literacy and in awe of those who wielded its power. O'Casey uses this to dramatize the ease with which the poor were seduced into what he saw as a bourgeois revolution which brought them nothing but suffering and death. It is hardly surprising, then, that the villains in these plays are educated intruders who speak a language strikingly different from that of the tenement dwellers.
Volume 1 of the Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke presents Burke's early literary writings up to 1765, and before he became a key political figure.
The Works of Aphra Behn: The fair jilt and other short stories
The Ruined Cottage: The Brothers Michael
The greatest quotes from Dickens...an essential reference book providing every notable and quotable passage or short comment by Dickens on a subject which interested the great author...encompassing all his work.
This volume contains more than 350 letters, the great majority of them previously unpublished, which are supplemented, as before, by scrupulous annotation and extensive cross-referencing; by a chronology covering the whole of Hardy's career ...
Ed. J. M. Robson. Intro. Alexander Brady. Toronto and Buffalo: U of Toronto P; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. 213-310. . The Subjection of Women 1869. Essays on Equality, Law, and Education. Vol. 21 of Collected Works of John ...
Richard M. Dunn , Geoffrey Scott and the Berenson Circle : Literary and Aesthetic Life in the Early 20th Century 35. Gary Gautier , Landed Patriarchy in Fielding's Novels : Fictional Landscapes , Fictional Genders 36.
He was at one point tempted to join Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical movement, as Biely had done. When he met Steiner in March 1911, he explained what in the school attracted him, asking Steiner whether one could be a writer and a ...
... Thomas 186 , 327 Davies , John 101 Davis , Lennard 315 De Quincey , Thomas 139 de Saussure , Cesar 312 de Muralt , Béat Loyis 308 Deal , gentlewoman of 288–9 , 332–3 death attitudes to 1-2 debtors suicides by 131 , 273-4 Deathy ...
that none of our students were black, few were women, or that the values we "disinterestedly" discovered in Jane Austen or E. M. Forster were at least partly determined by racial, social, and sexual presuppositions.