Theatre and Residual Culture

This book considers the cultural residue from pre-Christian Ireland in Synge-s plays and performances. By dramatising a residual culture in front of a predominantly modern and political Irish Catholic middle class audience, the book argues that Synge attempted to offer an alternative understanding of what it meant to be -modern- at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book draws extensively on Synge-s archive to demonstrate how pre-Christian residual culture informed not just how he wrote and staged pre-Christian beliefs, but also how he thought about an older, almost forgotten culture that Catholic Ireland desperately wanted to forget. Each of Synge-s plays is considered in an individual chapter, and they identify how Synge-s dramaturgy was informed by pre-Christian beliefs of animism, pantheism, folklore, superstition and magical ritual.

Christopher Collins is Assistant Professor of Drama at the University of Nottingham, UK. From 2010-2015 he taught at the Department of Drama in Trinity College Dublin, where the research for this book was conducted. He has published extensively on Synge's plays and performances, including a companion to The Playboy of the Western World (2016).

1. Introduction.- 2. The Emergence of the Playwright.- 3. Flagrant Heathens.- 4. A Christless Creed.- 5. The Cries of Pagan Desperation.- 6. A Sort of Saint.- 7. Christy and the Changeling.- 8. Conclusion.