Dancing and Remembering: A Contextual Reading of Brian Friel’s Play Dancing at Lughnasa | ||||
| مجلة البحث العلمي في الآداب | ||||
| Article 6, Volume 22, Issue 3, April 2021, Page 177-211 PDF (734.23 K) | ||||
| Document Type: المقالة الأصلية | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/jssa.2021.77264.1264 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
Mohsen Abbas 
| ||||
| جامعة حلوان_-قسم اللغة الإنجليزية-کلية الاداب | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| In Brian Friel’s play Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), the Irish playwright describes the last joyful moments in the lives of five unmarried Irish sisters who live together in a poor cottage in the fictional small town of Ballybeg in North Ireland. The retrospective tale that is narrated by the adult Michael, who is also the illegitimate son of Chris –one of the five sisters- portrays the forces that led to the collapse of the family in the 1936 summer during the Lughnasa festival celebrations. The hybrid form of drama and storytelling is Brian Friel’s device to escape mega narrative and focus on the stories of individuals and small families. This de-familiarization of traditional literary conventions enables him to surrender grand history to personal stories. Furthermore, Friel is experimenting with the memory play form as he believes that man’s memory anamnesis should not be trusted as factual. Furthermore, dance also plays a significant role in the play where almost every character dances at a certain point, but it is how every character involves in the act of dancing that illuminates him/her to the theatergoers. Indeed, dancing in the play is a release that connotes unfulfilled desires and hopes that cannot be expressed in words. In short, Brian Friel is the playwright who most probably defines Ireland to the outside world through analyzing the complexities of Irish culture | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Irish drama; dancing; memory; Catholicism | ||||
| References | ||||
|
Andrews, E. (1995). The art of Brian Friel, neither reality nor dreams. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Armstrong, J. (2014).Recovering ritual in Brian Friel’s dancing at Lughnasa and Luis Valdez’ mummified deer. American Conference for Irish Studies. Arnsberg, C. M. and S. Kimball. (1968): Family and community in Ireland, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Battersby, E. (2015, October 2). Eileen Battersby on Friel: Astonishing, a privilege .Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/eileen-battersby-on-friel-astonishing-a-privilege-1.237704.Accessed on03/05/2021.
Boland, R. (2015, October 2). Rosita Boland’s three questions for Brian Friel. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/brian-friel/rosita-boland-s-three-questions-for-brian-friel-1.2376175.Accessed on 03/05/2021.
Brown, T. (1993). Have we a context? : Transition, self and society in the theatre of Brian Friel’ in A. J. Peacock (Ed).The achievement of Brian Friel. (pp.190-201).Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe. Burke, P. (1997). As if language no longer existed: Non-verbal theatricality in the plays of Friel. In W. Kerwin, (Ed) .Brian Friel: A casebook.pp.13-22 .New York: Garland. Burkman, K. (1987). Myth and ritual in the plays of Samuel Beckett. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP. Casey, E.S. (1987).Remembering: A phenomenological study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Casey, E.S. (1993).Getting back into place: Toward a renewed understanding of the place-world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Casey, E.S. (1996).How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: A phenomenological Prolegomena. In S. Feld and K. Basso, (Eds.). Senses of place.pp.13-52.Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Casey, E.S. (2000).Imagining: A phenomenological Study.2nd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cave, R.A. (1999). Questioning for ritual and ceremony in a godforsaken world: Dancing at Lughnasa and, wonderful Tennessee: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 5(1), pp.109-126. Clutterbuck, C. (1999). Lughnasa After Easter: Treatment of narrative imperialism in Friel and Devlin. Irish University Review, 29 (1), pp.111-118. Donoghue, D. (1986). We Irish: Essays on Irish literature and society. New York: Knopf. Eliad, M. (1971). The myth of the eternal return or cosmos and history. (W.R. Trask, Trans.) Princeton University press. Friel, B. (1990).Dancing at Lughnasa. London: Faber and Faber. Friel, B. (1991). An interview with Mel Gibson, in C. Murray (Ed).Brien Friel: Essays, diaries, interviews: 1964-1999. London and New York: Faber and Faber.pp.139-149. Gagne, L.B. (2007). Three dances: The mystical vision of Brian Friel in dancing at Lughnasa. Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 59 (2), pp.119-132. Grene, N. (1999).The politics of Irish drama: Plays in context from Boucicault to Friel. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gussow, M. (1991). (1991, September 29). From Ballybeg to Broadway. New York Times Magazine,30+.https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/29/books/best-sellers-september-29-1991.html.Accessed on 03/05/2021. Hedda, F., et al., (2007). (Eds.).Recovering memory: Irish representations of past and present. Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars Publisher.
Ingman, H. (2018). Aging in Irish writing: Stranger to themselves. London: Palgrave. Kavanagh, J. (1991, October 1). Friel at last .Vanity Fair, 128+. https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1991/10/friel-at-last Kearny, R. (1984). (Ed.)The Irish mind. Dublin: Wolfhound. Kiberd, D. (1996).Inventing Ireland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kramer, P. (2000). Dancing at Lughnasa: Unexcused absence. Modern Drama, 43(2), pp.171-181. Kraus, D. (1997).The failed words of Brian Friel. Modern Drama, (40).pp.359-373. Leavy, A. (2016, October 2). Brian Friel one year on: A critical overview. Irish Times.https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/brian-friel-one-year-on-a-critical-overview-1.2813558 accessed on 03/05/2021. Lee, H. (2013). A Brechtian scene in modern Irish drama: Brian Friel’s dancing at Lughnasa. The Yeats Journal of Korea, 42 (1), pp.131-162. Lin, Y.C. (2013). To be in touch with some otherness: Memory, history, and ethics in Brian Friel’s dancing at Lughnasa. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 39(2), pp.187-214. Lojek, H. (2004). Brian Friel's sense of place. In S. Richards (Ed.). The Cambridge companion to twentieth-century Irish drama. (pp. 177-190). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lojek, H. (2006). Dancing at Lughnasa and the unfinished revolution. In A. Roche (Ed.). The Cambridge companion to Brian Friel. pp. 78-90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McNeil, Maire. (1962). The festival of Lughnasa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manning, J. (1997).In touch with otherness: The women’s voices in Dancing at Lughnasa. Text and Presentation, 18, pp.91-99. McGrath, F.C. (1989).Language, myth and history in the later plays of Brian Friel. Contemporary Literature, 30(4), pp.534-545. McGrath, F.C. (1990).Brian Friel and the politics of the Anglo-Irish language. Colby Quarterly, 26(4), pp.241-248. McGrath, F.C. (1999). Brian Friel (post) colonial drama: Language, illusion and politics. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. McKeone, G. (2015, October 2).Brian Friel revealed Ireland’s past and present to itself. The Guardian .https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/oct/02/brian-friel-revealed-ireland-past-and-present-to-itself.Accessed on 04/05/2021. McMullan, A. (1999). In touch with some otherness: Gender, authority and the body in Dancing at Lughnasa. Irish University Review, 29(1).pp.90-100. Meredith, F. (2015, September 1).The dark heart of Dancing at Lughnasa. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/the-dark-heart-of-dancing-at-lughnasa-1.2332117.Accessed on 04/05/2021 Murray, C. (2014). The theatre of Brian Friel: Tradition and modernity. London: Bloomsbury. O’Faolain, S. (1949). The Irish: A character study. New York: Devin Adair. O’Toole, F. (1993). Marking Time: From Making History to Dancing at Lughnasa. In A.J. Peacock (Ed).The achievement of Brian Friel. (pp.202-214) .Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe. O’Toole, F. (2015, October 2).Brian Friel’s interview with Fintan O’Toole: I’m not really very good at this kind of question. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/brian-friel/rosita-boland-s-three-questions-for-brian-friel-1.2376175.Accessed on 03/05/2021 O’Toole, F. (2015, October 3). Brian Friel: No country needed his gift more than Ireland. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/brian-friel-no-country-needed-his-gift-more-than-ireland-1.2377115.Accessed on 03/05/2021
O’Toole, F. (2015, October, 2). Fintan O’Toole: The truth according to Brian Friel. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/brian-friel/fintan-o-toole-the-truth-according-to-brian-friel-1.2375988.Accessed on 03/05/2021
Ojrzynska, k. (2010).In Ballybeg and beyond: Private and public space in Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. In A. Ciuk and K. M .Kozakowska (Eds.) Exploring space: Spatial notions in cultural, literary and language studies. Volume 1: Space in cultural and literary studies. Pp.300-308.Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars Publisher. Peacock, A.(1993).(Ed).The achievement of Brian Friel. Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, Colin Smythe. Pilny, O. (2000). Narrative and communication: The case of Brian Friel and Field Day .Litteraria Pragensia, 10 (20), pp.31-52. Pine, E. (2015, October 3).Brian Friel: The equal of Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/brian-friel/brian-friel-the-equal-of-arthur-miller-and-harold-pinter-1.2376302.Accessed on 03/05/2021
Pine, R. (1999).The Diviner: The Art of Brian Friel. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Pine, R. (2015, October 2).Brian Friel obituary. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/oct/02/brian-friel.Accessed on 05/05/2021 Richtarik, M. (2019).Forging a usable past: Brian Friel’s making history. ELH Journal (English Literary History Journal), 86, pp.1089-1123. Roche, A. (1999). (Ed.) Irish University Review: Special Brian Friel Issue. 29:1.pp.1-250. Roche, A. (2011).Brian Friel: Theatre and politics.Houndmills.UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Rousuck, W. (1990, November, 12). https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-11-12-1993316173-story.html Russell, R. (2014).Modernity, community, and place in Brian Friel’s drama. New York: Syracuse University press. Sharratt, M. (2019, August 9). Dancing at Lughnasa. Feminism and religion. (Blog).https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/08/09/dancing-at-lughnasa. Tallone, G. (2016).Instead of obituary: Brian Friel’s silent voices: Memory and celebration. Sturdi Irlandesi.Journal of Irish Studies, 6(1), pp.11-16. Tallone, G. (2020).Old age and aging: Presence and absence in the plays of Brian Friel. Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 26(1), pp.140-153. Tompkins, J. (1997). Breaching the body’s boundaries: Abjected subject positions in postcolonial drama. Modern Drama, 40(4), pp.502-513. Tracy, R. (1991). Eight sisters in Irish drama: Revision of the three sisters, by Anton Chekhov, in a version by Frank McGuinness, and dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel. Irish Literary Supplement, 35. Ward, D. (1998). Dancing with god: Religion and ritual in Friel’s Lughnasa. The Month, 31(9), pp.391-394. Ward, D. (2014, April 1). Dancing at Lughnasa: The evolution of a masterpiece, step by step. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/apr/01/dancing-at-lughnasa-masterpiece-theatre-by-the-lake.Accessed on 04/05/2021 Whelan, K. (2006).The Cultural effects of the famine. In A. Cleary and C. Connolly (Eds). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture. Pp.137-154.Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres. | ||||
|
Statistics Article View: 240 PDF Download: 540 |
||||
