This essential guide provides a deeply informed survey of the criticism of all the plays and major stories authored by Brian Friel. Scott Boltwood introduces readers to the key themes that have been used to characterise Friel's entire career, moving chronologically from his early work as a successful short story writer to the present day. This is an essential text for dedicated modules or courses on Modern or Contemporary British and Irish drama offered as part of English literature degrees, or for the literature and culture modules of undergraduate and postgraduate Irish studies degrees. In addition, this book is an ideal companion for A-level students reading Friel's plays, or anyone with an interest in this complex writer's career.

Through discussion of the ways in which major Northern Irish poets (such as John Hewitt, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Louis MacNeice and Derek Mahon) have been influenced by America, this study shows how Northern Irish poetry overspills national borders, complicating and enriching itself through cross-cultural interaction and hybridity.

First published in 1997

Apocryphal and Literary Influences on Galway Diasporic History establishes that apocryphal stories, in all their transformations, contribute to collective memory. Common characteristics frame their analysis: irreducible and enduring elements, often embedded in archetypal drama; lack of historical verification; establishment in collective memory; revivals after periods of dormancy; subjection to political and economic manipulation; implicit speculation; and literary transformations. This book contextualises Unsettled, an Australian novel about a convict play, derived from the Irish apocryphal story of The Magistrate of Galway, and documents previously unpublished primary material, including apocryphal stories passed through generations of descendents of settlers, Martin and Maria Lynch, and The Hibernian Father, a play by Irish convict, Edward Geoghegan. It puts forward new hypotheses: that the Irish hero Cuchulain may have provided a template for the archetypal and apocryphal story of the Magistrate of Galway; that disgraced Trinity College medical student and aspiring writer, Edward Geoghegan, enacted and recounted the same father-son archetypal conflict when he was transported to Botany Bay in 1839, and wrote the The Hibernian Father based on the Magistrate of Galway; that working-class Irish families were marginalised in South-east South Australian historical records; that oral apocryphal Lynch stories may be true; that Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2006) offers an alternative history of the Hawkesbury River settlement, by some definitions apocryphal. The mystery of Geoghegan’s disappearance is solved, and knowledge about his life increased. French theorist Gerard Genette’s notion, advanced in Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1997), of all novels being transtextual, provides a model for the analysis of relationships between these key apocryphal texts.

This book deals with the field day theatre and what Brian Friel has presented to it in various aspects.

Surveying the life, work and accolades of Irish playwright Brian Friel, this literary companion investigates his personal and professional relationships and his literary topics and themes, such as belonging, violence, patriarchy and hypocrisy. Character summaries describe his most significant figures, particularly St. Columba, the victims of Derry's Bloody Sunday, and Hugh O'Neill, the Lord of Tyrone. Entries analyze Friel's style in detail, from his column in the Irish Times and his short fiction in the New Yorker to his most recent plays, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Translations, and Dancing at Lughnasa.