“You Know What She Died of, Mother Pegg? Of Darkness …”

Abstract

This article examines the Shannon Scheme, which involved the construction of the largest hydroelectric dam in Europe from 1925, and the subsequent Rural Electrification Scheme (RES) not just as defining projects of the modern Irish State, but as social watersheds of the twentieth century that had a complex and wide-ranging influence on artists including Seán Keating and Samuel Beckett. The article considers the intertwining of art and electricity in the artistic responses to the Scheme and the RES, Irish electrification’s political and social resonances, and the extent to which Beckett’s plays, particularly Endgame, can be read as ‘electric’ works.