"Between the Art and the Nation: Modern Polish and Irish Drama"

 

Instructor: John Merchant

Office Hours: By appointment

 

 

Explores the challenge of balancing nation and art in modern Polish and Irish drama, both within its colonial and post-colonial contexts, using a cross-continental framework. The course examines points of contact and commonality that existed between the Polish and Irish theatrical communities, while also considers the limits and barriers imposed by local conditions on intercultural understanding. The texts have been chosen for their resonance with these themes, as well as for their accessibility to a general, English-speaking audience.

      

 

• Introduction: Historical overview of Poland and Ireland in the 19th-20th Centuries

 

• Dreaming the Life of the Nation: the Mythology of Resistance

The Countess Cathleen (W. B. Yeats)                           

The Legend (Stanislaw Wyspiafski)                        

 

• Mixed Marriages: Uniting the Folk and Modern Worlds

The Playboy of the Western World (Synge)                    

The Wedding (Wyspiafski)                               

 

• The Unseen Stage: the Place of Poetic Drama

The Dreaming of the Bones (Yeats)                        

Posthumous Escapades (Boleslaw Leßmian)                

 

• With Independence Comes Reality: the Art of Revolution

The Plough and the Stars (Sean O'Casey)                

The Crazy Locomotive (Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz)             

 

• Beyond the Nation and the Individual: Inter-Human Absurdity

Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)                       

The Marriage (Witold Gombrowicz)                         

 

• The Imperial Inheritance: Making (Non-)Sense of History

Translations (Brian Friel)                                        

Tango (Slawomir Mrozek)                                

 

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