Dr Helena Sheehan's original study, Irish television drama, appeared in 1987. It traced 25 years (1962-87) of Irish society in a process of social transformation and the role of television drama in a struggle to define the nature of that process. This book is a sequel, advancing the story another 15 years (1987-2002). From 'Fair City' to 'Family' to 'Father Ted', it examines television drama in the time of the Celtic tiger, striving to come to terms with the flux of Irish life in an increasingly globalized world, in a time of significant changes in the climate of broadcasting.
“But we can still rise now”, runs a line of Scotland’s unofficial national anthem Flower of Scotland, “and be the nation again” who defeated the English King Edward II in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn. These short lines tell us much about the concept of the nation. Firstly, the pronoun of the nation is “we”. Secondly, nationhood remains aspirational for some, while it is entirely taken-for-granted for others. Thirdly, nations often trace their origins back to an implausibly dim and distant past. Finally, it points to the fundamentally discursive nature of the nation: the nation appears not as something which simply is, but as something which can be, called into existence through talk, official documents, official and unofficial national anthems, ceremonies and parades, monuments and statuary, press coverage and, increasingly, television. This book, which arose out of a conference held in Tarragona in 2007, focuses on the complex discourses of the nation to be found in the television systems of twelve different countries, examining how these circulate in fiction, in news and documentary (including re-enactment formats), and in entertainment programmes, adverts and the coverage of large-scale sporting events. The nation which emerges is everywhere and nowhere, talked about endlessly but never finally grasped, repeatedly staged and re-enacted but lacking a foundational script. In short, it is a site of struggle. The stakes are high, since the nation when mobilised is a force to be reckoned with, and the on-going attempts to define it are many, varied and often highly creative. This book details many such events, from the high drama of war reporting to the self-mocking irony of ten-second commercial spots.
In 1898, documentary footage of a yacht race was shot by Robert A. Mitchell, making him the first Irishman to shoot a film within Ireland. Despite early exposure to the filmmaking process, Ireland did not develop a regular film industry until the late 1910s when James Mark Sullivan established the Film Company of Ireland. Since that time, Ireland has played host to many famous films about the country_Man of Aran, The Quiet Man, The Crying Game, My Left Foot, and Bloody Sunday_as well as others not about the country_Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. It has also produced great directors such as Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan, as well as throngs of exceptional actors and actresses: Colin Farrel, Colm Meaney, Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Maureen O'Hara, and Peter O'Toole. The Historical Dictionary of Irish Cinema provides essential facts on the history of Irish cinema through a list of acronyms and abbreviation; a chronology; an introduction; a bibliography; and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the pioneers and current leaders in the industry, the actors, directors, distributors, exhibitors, schools, arts centers, the government bodies and some of the legislation they passed, and the films.
Despite the steady rise in adaptations of Samuel Beckett’s work across the world following the author’s death in 1989, Beckett’s afterlives is the first book-length study dedicated to this creative phenomenon. The collection employs interrelated concepts of adaptation, remediation and appropriation to reflect on Beckett’s own evolving approach to crossing genre boundaries and to analyse the ways in which contemporary artists across different media and diverse cultural contexts – including the UK, Europe, the USA and Latin America – continue to engage with Beckett. The book offers fresh insights into how his work has kept inspiring both practitioners and audiences in the twenty-first century, operating through methodologies and approaches that aim to facilitate and establish the study of modern-day adaptations, not just of Beckett but other (multimedia) authors as well.
Irish theatre and its histories appear to be dominated by men and their actions. This book's socially and culturally contextualized analysis of performance over the last two decades, however reveals masculinities that are anything but hegemonic, played out in theatres and other arenas of performance all over Ireland.
Technology in Irish Literature and Culture shows how such significant technologies—typewriters, gramophones, print, radio, television, computers—have influenced Irish literary practices and cultural production, while also examining how technology has been embraced as a theme in Irish writing. Once a largely rural and agrarian society, contemporary Ireland has embraced the communicative, performative and consumptive habits of a culture utterly reliant on the digital. This text plumbs the origins of the present moment, examining the longer history of literature's interactions with the technological and exploring how the transformative capacity of modern technology has been mediated throughout a diverse national canon. Comprising essays from some of the major figures of Irish literary and cultural studies, this volume offers a wide-ranging, comprehensive account of how Irish literature and culture have interacted with technology.
Exploring writing of working-class Dublin after Seán O'Casey, this book breaks new ground in Irish Studies, unearthing submerged narratives of class in Irish life. Examining how working-class identity is depicted by authors like Brendan Behan and Roddy Doyle, it discusses how this hidden, urban Ireland has appeared in the country's literature.
To Be Continued... explores the world's most popular form of television drama; the soap opera. From Denver to Delhi, Moscow to Manchester, audiences eagerly await the next episode of As the World Turns, The Rich Also Weep or Eastenders. But the popularity of soap operas in Britain and the US pales in comparison to the role that they play in media cultures in other parts of the world. To Be Continued... investigates both the cultural specificity of television soap operas and their reception in other cultures, covering soap production and soap watching in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Australia and Latin America. The contributors consider the nature of soap as a media text, the history of the serial narrative as a form, and the role of the soap opera in the development of feminist media criticism. To Be Continued... presents the first scholarly examination of soap opera as global media phenomenon.
Within the growing field of TV series studies, little work has yet been done on Ireland. This volume fills the gap by offering new and compelling studies of contemporary Irish TV series. It argues that there is a distinctly Irish culture of TV fiction series and examines some of its finest examples, from Father Ted to Love/Hate and Sin Scéal Eile.
