The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the turbulent changes within the Irish society affected the face of modern Irish drama. Ireland, originally a rural country bound by religious dogmas and its own colonial past, underwent a considerable amount of development in the latter half of the 20th century; it was predominantly manifested through an increased Celtic Tiger economic prosperity and decreasing influence of the Catholic Church. The central interest of Irish culture has always been the effort to define a unifying national metanarrative and identity. In the beginning of the 20th century this desire was motivated by a struggle to establish a vital opposition between Ireland and Great Britain and definitely renounce its depreciating status of a former colony. However, in the second half of the 20th century the discrepancy between the nationalist ideology driven idea of Irish identity (whose value has always been questionable to say the least) and its modern reality became unbridgeable. The introduction of this thesis is dedicated to summarizing the changes within the Irish society in the course of the 20th century. A brief characterization of this turbulent development should justify the urge of more recent artists to re-formulate the Irish national metanarrative to suit the 20th century...

La question de l’identité est au cœur de l’œuvre de Denis Johnston. Son théâtre revient de manière insistante sur l’histoire irlandaise, en particulier sur le processus de fabrication des mythes républicains qui transforment les meneurs des insurrections en héros de la nation, et dévoile l’écart entre les aspirations de ces grandes figures romantiques et les préoccupations fort terre-à-terre de ses contemporains au lendemain de la création de l’Etat Libre d’Irlande. La nation, telle qu’il la met en scène, semble s’être érigée sur les ruines de l’« identité irlandaise » telle que l’exaltaient les artisans de la Renaissance littéraire. Par ailleurs, Johnston met en crise la notion d’identité à l’échelle individuelle en interrogeant, par de nombreuses expérimentations dramaturgiques, le personnage de théâtre traditionnel : recours à l’allégorie, démultiplication des rôles pour un même personnage, sollicitation constante des jeux de rôles et de la métathéâtralité, le théâtre de Johnston fait la part belle à cette « crise du personnage » en laquelle Robert Abirached voit la marque du théâtre moderne. Notre hypothèse est que ces deux aspects de la dramaturgie johnstonienne sont les deux volets complémentaires d’une même critique du paradigme identitaire, dont il conviendra de définir les enjeux et les modalités. Nous analyserons conjointement les stratégies idéologiques et esthétiques que Johnston met en œuvre dans l'ensemble de ses pièces pour la scène, et montrerons qu'en démantelant les représentations figées d’une hypothétique « irlandité » pour mieux rendre à l’Irlande une identité multiple et mouvante, le dramaturge est peut-être, paradoxalement, l’un de ceux qui auront le mieux servi le projet des fondateurs du théâtre national irlandais. / Denis Johnston 's dramatic works question the notion of identity. They all focus on the history of Ireland and more especially on the way Irish rebels have been turned into national icons, although the materialistic culture developing in the young Irish Free State is at odds with the ideals of those Romantic figures. In his view, national identity has fossilized into clichés that jeer at the Irish Literary Revival. At the same time, his plays destabilize the notion of identity on an individual level, unsetting conventional stage characters. He stages the "crisis of the character" which, according to Robert Abirached, modern drama is concerned with. I argue that those two aspects of Johnston's work are the two sides of one and the same critique of the failure of conventional drama to convey identity on the stage. Studying the ideology that underpins Johnston's aesthetic experiments, I intend to show that the dramatist turns out to have paradoxically served the purpose of the founders of Irish national drama : he disfigures the clichés which supposedly embody Irishness, and thus allows the nation to imagine again its multifaceted identity.

1 Abstract The main aim of the thesis is to introduce the problematics of Czech translations from Irish literature published in the Czech Lands in the period between 1945 - 2014. The author of the thesis provides the list of the authors that were translated in the Czech Lands in that period, and comments upon the literary tradition related to it. Due to the extensive amount of works, the thesis is divided into several chapters, introducing four specific periods: 1945 - 1948 (the end of WWII - the beginning of the Soviet control), 1949 - 1968 (Soviet control - the occupation of the Troops of Warsaw Pact), 1969 - 1989 (the occupation - Velvet Revolution) and 1989 - 2014 (Velvet Revolution - "Velvet Divorce" - the present day). In each chapter the historic introduction is provided mainly to foreshadow the context of the whole era. The discussion about the translations from Irish literature consists from general list of works by individual authors and comments upon their presence at the Czech literary market, the frequency of publishing, the reception of individual authors etc. The author also considers the socio-political occurences that might have influenced the final shape of the Irish-Czech literary canon, and, when possible, tries to demonstrate the extent of such influence.

The author's aim for her diploma thesis is to examine the phenomenon of Irish theatre, which existed in repertoire of one of the most influential small scenes in Prague - Činoherní klub. The work will delve into Czech-Irish cultural relations as 19th century as well as illustrate the way poetics of theatre align with tragicomical poetics of Irish theatre. This will be demonstrated on examples of specific plays by Irish authors The Drama Club put out throughout the years.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis centers on a country that has produced some of the greatest and most important English language dramas of the past two centuries. Within this cultural context, this thesis is also about a feminine revival in Irish theatre and how this can be a powerful tool to incite change. Early in history, Irish writers, and specifically dramatists, recreated a type of theatre that captured the true essence of what it meant to be Irish by representing their struggles, frustrations and humor. The Irish talent for storytelling connects back to its Gaelic roots and has remained a constant in the life of a culture that has passed down this art form for centuries. The focus of this thesis is to examine three contemporary Irish plays by prominent playwrights who came to the world of theatre from very different backgrounds. Each play is written by a different hand, yet all share a vital common denominator: the interaction of female character groups – groups that are central to the action of each play. What incited my interest in these three plays – Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, Anne Devlin’s Ourselves Alone and Marina Carr’s The Mai – was the playwright’s ability to expose what had been silenced in Irish history for so long. Each female character portrays one important aspect of Irish womanhood that has been tragically understated in the nation’s literature since the death of John Millington Synge: woman’s struggle between what she wants to be and who she is expected to be. These three plays will be scrutinized in terms of three elements of social control contributing to woman’s struggle in Irish society: myth, church and patriarchal tradition.

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