Modern British and Irish Drama

Catalog description

From Wilde and Shaw to the present season. ENGL 454 Modern British and Irish Drama (3)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. ENGL 454 will introduce students to some of the most exciting playwrights and important trends in modern British and Irish drama from the late nineteenth century to the present. The course will examine a number of plays, exploring not only how they work formally, but also how changing cultural and historical contexts helped to shape the plays and British and Irish drama more generally. Authors under consideration will vary from class to class, but may include writers such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, John Synge, Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, Sean O'Casey, Samuel Becket, Denis Johnston, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Martin McDonagh, Noel Coward, John Osborne, T. S. Eliot, Robert Bolt, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, and Tom Stoppard. The course will explore such topics as the role of drama in the Irish Revival, nationalism, and the revolution, the use of myth and folklore in drama, the emergence of realism, the function of Wilde and Shaw's humor in their plays, drama's response to the decline of the British empire, the modernist verse drama, post-modernism in drama, issues of stagecraft and performance, and the political function of such theaters as the Abbey Theatre or the Field Day Company. Students will write at least two papers on particular plays, and can expect to take a mid-term exam and a final exam.The course may be used as English Major elective credit or as credit towards the English minor, and will be offered once a year with 40 seats per offering.