Nicholas Grene. The Theatre of Tom Murphy Playwright Adventure

Tom Murphy has been an intriguing figure in Irish drama, well served up to this by scholars like Grene, Fintan O’Toole, Alexandra Poulain and Christopher Murray and this volume maintains the high standard of literary engagement. Tom Murphy’s plays, at their best, are amongst the most powerful writings for the Irish stage over the past fifty years, and this is a substantial critical volume, edited and largely written by one of Ireland’s leading scholars of the Irish theatre and ‘Murphy’s darin..

Sexual citizenship in Belfast, Northern Ireland

In this article we examine the contours and construction of sexual citizenship in Belfast, Northern Ireland through in-depth interviews with 30 members of the GLBT community and a discursive analysis of discourses of religion and nationalism. In the first half of the article we outline how sexual citizenship was constructed in the Irish context from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, arguing that a moral conservatism developed as a result of religious reform and the interplay between Catholic and Protestant churches, and the redefining of masculinity and femininity with the rise of nationalism. In the second half of the article, we detail how the Peace Process has offered new opportunities to challenge and destabilise hegemonic discourses of sexual citizenship by transforming legislation and policing, and encouraging inward investment and gentrification

Several Landscapes: Bowen and the Terrain of North Cork

The subject of this essay is the Irish writings of the novelist Elizabeth Bowen. This essay discusses the disjunction between Elizabeth Bowen's critical writings on her family history and her fictive representations of the landscape of North Cork. Looking at her 1942 family chronicle, Bowen¿s Court and her childhood memoir Seven Winters, also published in 1942, the author suggests a gap between her critical perspectives on her position as an Anglo-Irish writer and her fictions on the same theme. The essay concentrates on her imaginings of the hostile landscape around her home in North Cork and the murderous intent of these Irish fields and hills, in particular in her novel, The Last September and her short story, "The Happy Autumn Fields"

Several Landscapes: Bowen and the Terrain of North Cork

The subject of this essay is the Irish writings of the novelist Elizabeth Bowen. This essay discusses the disjunction between Elizabeth Bowen’s critical writings on her family history and her fictive representations of the landscape of North Cork. Looking at her 1942 family chronicle, Bowen’s Court and her childhood memoir Seven Winters, also published in 1942, the author suggests a gap between her critical perspectives on her position as an Anglo-Irish writer and her fictions on the same theme. The essay concentrates on her imaginings of the hostile landscape around her home in North Cork and the murderous intent of these Irish fields and hills, in particular in her novel, The Last September and her short story, “The Happy Autumn Fields”