1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910483081003321

Autore

McEvoy Sean <1959->

Titolo

Class, Culture and Tragedy in the Plays of Jez Butterworth / / by Sean McEvoy

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2021

ISBN

9783030627119

303062711X

Edizione

[1st ed. 2021.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (VII, 217 p.)

Disciplina

822.914

822.92

Soggetti

Theater - History

Playwriting

Dramatists

Drama

Contemporary Theatre and Performance

Playwrights and Playwriting

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

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).

Sommario/riassunto

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 significant in a variety of ways to Butterworth's presentation of cultural and personal crisis.