Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries)

This book details the Irish socialistic tracks pursued by Bernard Shaw and Sean O’Casey, mostly after 1916, that were arguably impacted by the executed James Connolly. The historical context is carefully unearthed, stretching from its 1894 roots via W. B. Yeats’ dream of Shaw as a menacing, yet grinning sewing machine, to Shaw’s and O’Casey’s 1928 masterworks. In the process, Shaw’s War Issues for Irishmen, Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, Saint Joan, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and O’Casey’s The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, and The Silver Tassie are reconsidered, revealing previously undiscovered textures to the masterworks. All of which provides a rethinking, a reconsideration of Ireland’s great drama of the 1920s, as well as furthering the knowledge of Shaw, O’Casey, and Connolly.

Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, and the New Journalism: Whitechapel, Parnell, Titanic, and the Great War (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries)

This book explores Bernard Shaw’s journalism from the mid-1880s through the Great War—a period in which Shaw contributed some of the most powerful and socially relevant journalism the western world has experienced. In approaching Shaw’s journalism, the promoter and abuser of the New Journalism, W. T. Stead, is contrasted to Shaw, as Shaw countered the sensational news copy Stead and his disciples generated. To understand Shaw’s brand of New Journalism, his responses to the popular press’ portrayals of high profile historical crises are examined, while other examples prompting Shaw’s journalism over the period are cited for depth: the 1888 Whitechapel murders, the 1890-91 O’Shea divorce scandal that fell Charles Stewart Parnell, peace crusades within militarism, the catastrophic Titanic sinking, and the Great War. Through Shaw’s journalism that undermined the popular press’ shock efforts that prevented rational thought, Shaw endeavored to promote clear thinking through the immediacy of his critical journalism. Arguably, Shaw saved the free press.

Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation

George Bernard Shaw has always been regarded as a political provocateur and socialist with ideas that reflected a complicated public philosophy. Scholarship abounds on Shaw’s politics, but Nelson Ritschel’s compelling study is the first to explore how Shaw’s presence in Irish radical debate manifested itself not only through his direct contributions but also through the way he and his efforts were engaged by others--most notably by the socially liberal dramatist J. M. Synge and the socialist agitator James Connolly.

Looking closely at such works as In the Shadow of the Glen, John Bull’s Other Island, Playboy of the Western World, and O’Flaherty, V.C., Ritschel opens an important door on the hidden dialogue between these men. The result is a gripping, even suspenseful, narrative of the intellectual march to the Easter Uprising of 1916.

Performative and Textual Imaging of Women on the Irish Stage, 1820-1920: M.A. Kelly to J.M. Synge and the Allgoods

They trod the boards when to do so was not entirely respectable, yet how they portrayed Irish womanhood closely reflected the perception of the Irish about themselves as they swept from the Catholic Emancipation to the very real idea of becoming a free state. Ritschel (humanities, Massachusetts Maritime Academy) takes a nationalist and socialist reading of Irish theater, focusing on the images crafted by Yeats, Gonne, Synge, Fay, Nic Shiubhlaigh, the Allgoods and O'Casey. He works from the times when a new image of Irishness was wresting itself from a archetype of victim and into the concept of national resilience and self-determination, with the latter authors helping to form the representation Ireland consciously wished to present of itself as complex, historically in touch, literate, transcendent, tough yet tender. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)