Ageing masculinities in Irish literature and visual culture

Abstract

theatrical works that were being produced at the same time as better known playwrights were creating their major pieces of theatre. Personally, this reviewer would have liked to see a more sustained analysis of playwrights Teresa Deevy and Mary Manning since they are two female Irish dramatists who are in need of a greater amount of scholarly attention. In the final analysis, Theatre and Archival Memory is an extremely valuable academic text that will appeal to both new and established scholars of modern Irish drama. It sheds new light on playwrights with whom readers might not be very familiar. The book emphatically demonstrates that “while Ireland’s modernisation [. . .] was often a hollow façade, the development of a modern drama inculcated a sense of excitement, possibility, and experimentation” (253). Although there are a certain number of typos contained within the text, that is a matter for which the editors are responsible rather than the author. With Theatre and Archival Memory, Barry Houlihan has created a work that deserves a place in the list of important studies of Irish drama in the twentieth century. For this reason, he can certainly be said to have done Irish academia some service.