Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama

by Fiona Macintosh

Dying Acts explores the relationship between the dramatic representations of death in two societies where elaborate rituals make death and dying a part of the process of living, in a way that is now alien to most modern Western societies. But it is not simply the shared conception of death that makes a comparison between the Greek tragedies and the Irish plays, written some two and a half thousand years later, both a valuable and instructive task. The fact that mythical material - just as in classical Greece - forms the basis for many Irish plays written during the Literary Revival also makes such a comparison useful. Moreover, the writers of the Irish tragedies discussed - notably Yeats, O'Casey and Synge - explicitly turned to the Greek tragedians as 'exempla' in their attempt to found a national theatre. The Irish hero Cuchulain was regularly compared to the Greek heroes Heracles and Achilles by Celtic scholars, no less than by the playwrights themselves. This wide-ranging study uncovers the genuine affinities which do exist and examines the political and social context of their works. It is a subtle and intelligent exploration with unexpected and rewarding conclusions.

Hardcover

First published February 1, 1995

Reviews

[Red · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really an awesome study on theatre & death.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm definitely not biased.
This is a genuinely fantastic piece of scholarship. Meticulous as Fiona always is, clear, and highly intricate, it takes us through a number of modern Irish plays and ancient Greek tragedies with equal ease in both areas, functioning as a truly interdisciplinary moment of classical reception. I was fascinated - particularly with the introduction, which taught me about Medieval Irish reception (something I had never even considered before, and which strongly contradicts the perceived upper-class / imperial hegemony over Classics (that has been later dispelled by Hall & Stead's (again, not biased...) A People's History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1689 to 1939).
I will be sad to see Fiona leave Oxford, despite the fact that I'll be leaving with her. She is a fantastic APGRD director. She is a fantastic academic. And she is an all-round fantastic person. I will be forever grateful for her direction, and her gentle encouragement of (and funding of) my own dramatic exploits. My Hippolytus is, in many ways, indebted to her.