Introduction

Abstract

This book is a study of the relationship between ideological hegemony and cultural fantasy in Irish drama produced during the period 1899–1949. In recent years a number of scholars including Cheryl Herr, Stephen Watt, Christopher Murray, Anthony Roche, Nicholas Grene, Robert Welch, Lionel Pilkington, Mary Trotter, Christopher Morash and Ben Levitas have made significant contributions to the study of Irish drama in terms of cultural and historical contextualization.1 Now that Irish drama studies has a sound platform in terms of historicization, particularly regarding the relationship between drama, state formation and national identity, the time is ripe to engage in research which questions that relationship, specifically in terms of the disjunction between nation, class and gender in the Irish cultural context. In this sense Hegemony and Fantasy is a deliberate intervention rather than a general historicization, in terms of an engagement with Irish drama primarily from the perspectives of class and gender, rather than that of nation or national identity, which has formed the superstructure of many debates in Irish drama studies for many years. In parallel with the aim of shifting the methodological paradigm of Irish drama studies, Hegemony and Fantasy attempts to reaccentuate the focus on the Irish dramatic canon by providing a new engagement with canon-ical drama, as well as engaging with non-canonical drama especially in the under-researched period 1926–1949.