Research Catalog

Reading Brendan Behan

Title
Reading Brendan Behan / edited by John McCourt.
Publication
  • Cork, Ireland : Cork University Press, 2019.
  • ©2019

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library JFE 19-8292Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Additional Authors
McCourt, John, 1965-
Description
x, 250 pages : illustrations; 25 cm
Summary
Samuel Beckett referred to Brendan Behan as "the new O'Casey" and yet, despite all his international success, despite his enduring popularity, and perhaps because of his fame (and indeed, notoriety), Behan remains a neglected figure in literary criticism today. This is why this new volume edited by leading Irish Studies expert, John McCourt, is so timely. Penned by an impressive group of international scholars, Reading Brendan Behan looks beyond the author's all-too-well-known personality and focusses on what ultimately matters - the writing. Reading Brendan Behan is the first volume in 20 years to focus on Behan's rich and eclectic body of creative works - his poetry and plays in Irish and English, his short stories and his extraordinary autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy. It explores how Behan sought to identify the proper role for the post-independence Irish writer in a country where clerical and political policing and rigid censorship laws allowed little room for artistic manoeuvre. These essays position Behan between the founding father of Irish modernism, James Joyce, and Behan�s own generation, bringing him into dialogue with figures such as Flann O'Brien and Martin O'Cadhain. It pays prominent attention to his connections with Irish Republicanism, his formative time in England, his links with theatre directors, such as Joan Littlewood, as well as his engagement with politics and popular culture on both sides of the Irish Sea. These variegated connections make Behan a unique, if initially unlikely, bridge between Britain and Ireland. This volume will set the context in which Behan's works will be read into the future and firmly locate him as a major player in late modernism. While engaging in much close reading, the essays employ a variety of recent critical approaches, among them cultural Studies, theatre studies, translation and comparative studies, Post-Colonial theory, Queer theory, and reception studies. Reading Brendan Behan will reinvigorate scholarly interest and renew critical appraisal of one of Ireland's funniest, trickiest, and, at the same time, most serious experimental writers."--Publisher's website.
Subjects
Genre/Form
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-241) and index.
Contents
Introduction / John McCourt -- Brendan Behan's Borstal boy : the public persona and the delicate art of deceit / Derek Hand -- Lessons of detention / Maria DiBattista -- Bohemian Behan : late modernism,sexual politics and the "great awakening" of Brendan Behan / John Brannigan -- Brendan Behan : modernist writer / Deirdre McMahon -- Eros and liberation : the homoerotic boy in Borstal boy / Michael G. Cronin -- Brendan Behan's The hostage : translation, adaptation or recreation of An Giall? / Clíona Ní Ríordáin -- Brendan Behan and Elie Wiesel : An Giall and L'Aube / Mícheál Mac Craith -- "Not exactly patterned in the same mould" : Behan's Joyce / Johnn McCourt -- Secret scriptures : Brendan Behan in the Cruiskeen Lawn / Paul Fagan -- Behan's graveyard of radical possibility : Richard's Cork lag and the (Irish-) American dream / Michael Pierse.
Call Number
JFE 19-8292
ISBN
  • 9781782053378
  • 1782053379
OCLC
1081432486
Title
Reading Brendan Behan / edited by John McCourt.
Publisher
Cork, Ireland : Cork University Press, 2019.
Copyright Date
©2019
Type of Content
text
still image
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-241) and index.
Chronological Term
1900-1999
Added Author
McCourt, John, 1965- editor.
Research Call Number
JFE 19-8292
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