Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival

ISBN-13: 9780199268955 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 288 str.

Sinead Garrigan Mattar; Sinead Garrigan Mattar

Opis

What is the relevance of the Irish Revival to modernism? Why did Yeats's vision of a theatre for Ireland take a ritual form? What was so incendiary about J. M. Synge's vision of the Irish peasantry? These are among the questions that Garrigan Mattar seeks to answer by exploring the primitivism of the Irish Revival in relation to comparative science.

Recenzje

Mattar shows how Yeats, Synge and Gregory variously construed anthropologists' changing ideas of the "primitive"... One reason why Yeats and Synge got into trouble was because Irish nationalism retained self-boosting and Christianized "noble savage" concepts, whereas they had absorbed comparative anthropology's tilt towards darker gods. This more interesting, problematic and disturbing brand of primitivism, Mattar suggests, underlies the ritualistic forms they introduced to the Irish theatre - whether to awaken the audience or the gods. Mattar's book exemplifies the value of questioning both the Revival's self-projections and powerful academic paradigms.