Objective
To analyze representations of spectrality in modern and contemporary Irish theatre, investigating how ghosts, absent presences, and liminal figures articulate issues of memory, trauma, identity, and history. Through the reading and discussion of plays by W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Conor McPherson, and David Ireland, the course seeks to understand the transformations of ghostly figures in Irish drama between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as their relationship to specific historical, cultural, and political contexts.
Course reading materials will be made available via Google Drive or Canva.
Classes will be held via Google Meet.
Program
Class 1 – Introduction to Irish theatre and the concepts of ghosts and spectrality
Class 2 – Fin de siècle: ghostly presence in the plays of W. B. Yeats. Reading: The Dreaming of the Bones (1919)
Class 3 – Samuel Beckett and the spectralization of presence: Footfalls (1976) and Rockaby (1981)
Class 4 – Ghosts and storytelling in Conor McPherson’s The Weir (1997)
Class 5 – David Ireland and the Ghost of Northern Ireland. Reading: Sadie (2020)