Jez Butterworth is undoubtedly one of the most popular and commercially successful playwrights to have emerged in Britain in the early twenty-first century. This book, only the second so far to have been written on him, argues that the power of his most acclaimed work comes from a reinvigoration of traditional forms of tragedy expressed in a theatricalized working-class language. Butterworth’s most developed tragedies invoke myth and legend as a figurative resistance to the flat and crushing instrumentalism of contemporary British political and economic culture. In doing so they summon older, resonant narratives which are both popular and high-cultural in order to address present cultural crises in a language and in a form which possess wide appeal. Tracing the development of Butterworth’s work chronologically from
Mojo
(1995) to
The Ferryman
(2017), each chapter offers detailed critical readings of a single play, exploring how myth and legend become significantin a variety of ways to Butterworth’s presentation of cultural and personal crisis.
McEvoy
Class, Culture and Tragedy in the Plays of Jez Butterworth jetzt bestellen!
Weitere Infos & Material
1. Introduction.- 2. Yakkety Yak:
Mojo
(1995).- 3. Exclusion from the Garden:
The Night Heron
(2002).- 4. Homage:
The Winterling
(2006).- 5. Drought: Parlour Song (2008).- 6. The Enchanted Wood:
Jerusalem
(2009).- 7. Time, Myth and Power:
The River
(2012).- 8. Allusion:
The Ferryman
(2017).
Sean McEvoy is a Bye Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK. His research specialisms include early modern English theatre and contemporary British and Irish theatre, with a particular interest in tragedy. Previous publications include
Hamlet: A Sourcebook
(2005),
Ben Jonson: Renaissance Dramatist
(2007),
Theatrical Unrest: Ten Riots in the History of the Stage 1601-2004
(2016), and
Tragedy: The Basics
(2017).
