Postcolonial Tragedy in Ireland

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.

Postcolonial Tragedy in Ireland: Sacrifice, Failure, and the Resiliency of Hope is the first comprehensive study to foreground tragedy as a central mode of Irish drama from the late nineteenth century to the present. Despite canonical works by Synge, Yeats, O’Casey, Carr, and others, tragedy has been understudied in Irish literary scholarship, largely due to postcolonial criticism’s suspicion of tragedy as a conservative form. This book challenges that assumption, revealing tragedy’s radical potential to cultivate hope in moments of political and historical crisis.

Surveying over a century of Irish drama, the study traces the evolution of tragedy from the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 to the works of Marina Carr and Conor McPherson. It examines both celebrated figures like Beckett and Gregory and lesser-known voices such as Ní Ghráda and Ó Flaitheartaí, while placing Irish drama into dialogue with postcolonial playwrights including Soyinka, Césaire, Hansberry, and Fugard.

Through this comparative framework, Postcolonial Tragedy in Ireland shows how Irish dramatists adapt tragedy to articulate sacrifice, failure, and resilience, offering audiences visions of radical hope. Far from a conservative safety valve, tragedy emerges here as a politically charged, anti-triumphalist form central to Irish and global postcolonial drama.