The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge

John Millington Synge was a leading literary figure of the Irish Revival who played a significant role in the founding of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1904. This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the whole range of Synge's work from well-known plays like Riders to the Sea, The Well of the Saints and The Playboy of the Western World, to his influential prose work The Aran Islands. The essays provide detailed and insightful analyses of individual texts, as well as perceptive reflections on his engagements with the Irish language, processes of decolonisation, gender, modernism and European culture. Critical accounts of landmark productions in Ireland and America are also included. With a guide to further reading and a chronology, this book will introduce students of drama, postcolonial studies, and Irish studies as well as theatregoers to one of the most influential and controversial dramatists of the twentieth century.