• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

IASIL 2012 – BOOK OF ABSTRACTS 1A THE FRACTURED FAMILY, FATHERHOOD, AND MASCULINITY IN IRISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE CHAIR: JANE MCGAUGHEY SHEILA MCAVEY (Becker College) Fractured Irish Masculinity Britain’s Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which allowed for divorce actions to proceed in civil rather than canon courts, broke open the cultural monument of the staid Victorian marriage. Yet, the public recognition of unhappy marriages did not remove the element of scandal that attached to the standing of those who sought or were a party to divorce, or to an Irish husband whose masculinity might be put to question in publicity about a divorce. This paper looks at Lever’s depiction of various forms of uneasy masculinity in Davenport Dunn, Sir Brook Fossbrooke, and The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly, novels written in the decade following the Matrimonial Causes Act. In these works, this threat to the once-solid male bastion of marriage seemed to heighten anxiety about masculinity, and Lever’s portraits of corrupt Anglo- Irish marital unions, alongside the absurd posturings of aging males in Sir Brooke Fossbrooke and The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly offer a sharply realistic assessment of the fractured surface of urban Irish life at a particularly unsettling moment. Sheila McAvey has taught literature and related courses in the Humanities Department at Becker since fall 1992. Prior to Becker, she was an editor at the American Antiquarian Society, in Worcester, MA. Her research interests include issues of female desire, divorce, and Irish masculinity in the works of the Anglo-Irish novelist Charles Lever. She has also been active in her college’s strategic plans for incorporating sensitivity to global issues and social responsibility at Becker College, and has recently attended conferences at the Aspen Institute and the American Association of Colleges and Universities. LISA MCGONIGLE (University of Otago) “God the father and Joseph the carpenter”: faith and fatherhood in Bruce Beresford’s Evelyn (2002) Turn-of-the-millennium Ireland was wracked by revelations of mass abuse and neglect in industrial schools, residential schools run by Catholic orders but funded by the State until wide- spread reform of the child-care system was instigated by the 1970 Kennedy Report. This paper examines Bruce Beresford’s film Evelyn (2002), based on the legal action taken by Desmond “Dessie” Doyle in 1955 to obtain the release of his children from the industrial schools into which they were placed following the “unfortunate desertion” of their mother from the family home. In comparison to the findings of the Ryan Report (as the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was commonly known), which detailed a “climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeat[ing] most of the institutions”, Evelyn offers a highly sanitised picture of the institutional regime; the travesty of the industrial schools is not any abuse occurring therein but rather that the separation of the Doyle children from their father disrupts the family unit, with screenwriter Paul Pender emphasising the “family values message” of the text.1 However, in a socio-cultural paradigm where woman’s “life within the home” is recognised by the Constitution as providing a particular “support without which the common good cannot be achieved”, and fathers accorded no equivalent legal or cultural recognition, then what place paternity?2 This paper examines how Evelyn champions fatherhood by reappropriating the religious archetypes of St Joseph - the patron saint of both fathers and workers, and thus a doubly appropriate point of identification for Dessie Doyle, a painter and decorator by trade - and the Holy Trinity of “father, son and holy spirit”, thereby circumventing mariology and maternity alike. It is argued, however, that its favourable engagement with Catholic theology moves Evelyn in contradictory directions which cannot ultimately be reconciled. Pender describes the case as “a milestone in the whole social history of Ireland” in that the verdict in favour of Dessie “weakened the link between Church and State”, and Dessie is warned in the film by his solicitor that “to take on Church and State is to take on Goliath”.3 This paper examines how in spite of such statements, professions of faith permeate key moments and civic spaces alike throughout the film (such as the climactic courtroom scene), meaning that Evelyn’s avowed advocacy for secularism is partial at best. Lisa McGonigle is a PhD candidate in the Irish Studies programme, University of Otago, New Zealand. Her doctoral research is focused on how “the scandals” in the Catholic Church are represented in Irish literature and popular culture. She also holds a BA (Hons) in English Studies from Trinity College Dublin and an M Litt in Irish-Scottish Studies from the University of Aberdeen, 1Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Executive Summary, http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-Executive%20Summary.pdf, p20. Accessed November 16, 2011; Paul Pender, “Audio commentary”, Evelyn, directed by Bruce Beresford, DVD, Twentieth Century Fox, 2003. 2 Bunreacht na hÉireann, http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/upload/static/256.htm. Accessed November 16, 2011. 3 Pender, “Making of...”, Evelyn, DVD. and has published articles in the Irish Studies Review, Études irlandaises (forthcoming) and several book chapters. 1B CULTURAL TRANSLATIONS: BAILEGANGAIRE IN BRAZIL CHAIR: JOCHEN ACHILLES The leading idea of this panel is to discuss the production of Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire, by Cia Ludens, in São Paulo, in 2011-2012. The first paper, by Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos, deals with the translation and adaptation of Bailegangaire and A Thief of a Christmas, fused into one text renamed Balangangueri in the Brazilian production; the second, by Domingos Nunez, explores the process of staging the play to a Brazilian audience; and the third, by Shaun Richards, approaches the notion of ‘trauma trilogy’, considering Murphy’s TV play, Brigit, A Thief of a Christmas and Bailegangaire, informed by the Brazilian production. BEATRIZ KOPSCHITZ BASTOS (University of São Paolo) The story of Balangangueri and how it came by its appellation The Brazilian theatre company Cia Ludens staged in 2011 a play renamed Balangangueri, o lugar onde ninguém mais ri, as a re-writing of Bailegangaire and a Thief of a Christmas, which composed Tom Murphy’s playography in the author’s productive years of the 1980s. Written as two separate texts in 1985, they are, as it is well-known, two foils of the same story. While Bailegangaire travels back and forth in time, between Mommo‘s attempted narrative of the past, and her present struggles and those of her two granddaughters, A Thief of a Christmas enacts the story told by Mommo. This paper derives from the process of research and study of the three plays, the two original ones, and the Brazilian text, that preceded the actual production in Brazil. It aims to comment on the dramaturgy of Bailegangaire and A Thief of a Christmas, as two separate texts, and then focus on the strategies, additions, suppressions and modifications in the translated texts converted into Balangangueri by the artistic director of the company in order to transpose any mismatches between these two Irish plays and the Brazilian audience. Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos has a PhD in Irish Studies from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her post-doctoral research project on ‘Contemporary Irish Theatre’ was based at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and Trinity College, Dublin. She is currently a theatre producer in São Paulo, a guest research scholar at the W.B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies/USP, and an executive member of ABEI and IASIL, for which she is also Chair of the Bibliography Committee. DOMINGOS NUNEZ (Playwright) Balangangueri: Tom Murphy’s Universe on a Brazilian Stage Considering the two plays Tom Murphy wrote in 1985: Bailegangaire and A Thief of Christmas, put together in the Brazilian production by Cia Ludens, the main purpose of this paper is to give an illustrative account of the creative process undertaken by the company to stage Murphy’s universe to a local audience. Starting from an extensive study of Murphy’s works, the company investigated similarities and differences between Irish and Brazilian cultures and how recurring themes in the plays, such as the dialogue between past and present and its reverberations could be approached in order to speak to a Brazilian audience. Based on this thematic repetition, the psychological aspects pervading Murphy’s narratives to be exploited by the cast in physical and vocal terms were stimulated by suggestions that included Lacan’s terminology, Jung’s symbols, Tarot cards and afro dance and ritual references. Without losing sight of Murphy’s originals, the use of all these inspirational tools, intended to transport an Irish reality to a Brazilian environment also strongly influenced the conception of choreographies, original music, setting, costumes and lighting of the show, as it will be illustrated. Domingos Nunez has a PhD in Contemporary Irish Drama from the University of São Paulo and National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is a translator, a playwright and the Artistic Director of Cia Ludens, which has produced several Irish plays in Brazil, including Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (2004) and Faith Healer (2009/2010); Marie Jones’s Stones in his Pockets (2006); Bernard Shaw’s The Simpleton of The Unexpected Isles (2008), and Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire (2011/2012). SHAUN RICHARDS (St. Mary’s University College, London) Tom Murphy’s ‘Trauma Trilogy’ - Brigit/A Thief of a Christmas/Bailegangaire One of the recognised complexities of Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire is establishing the relationship between the time-frames within which the two main levels of the drama are located; the time-present staged mimetically and that past time and space evoked diegetically in the narrative of Mommo.

Load more

  140

Copy Link