The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama [Hardcover]

Grotesque features have been among the chief characteristics of drama in English since the 1990s. This new book examines the varieties of the grotesque in the work of some of the most original playwrights of the last three decades (including Enda Walsh, Philip Ridley, Tim Crouch and Suzan-Lori Parks), focusing in particular on ethical and political issues that arise from the use of the grotesque.Grotesque features have been among the chief characteristics of drama in English since the 1990s. This new book examines the varieties of the grotesque in the work of some of the most original playwrights of the last three decades (including Enda Walsh, Philip Ridley, Tim Crouch and Suzan-Lori Parks), focusing in particular on ethical and political issues that arise from the use of the grotesque.1. Introduction.- 2. Engaging Monsters.- 3. Wild Justice.- 4. Life in a Box.- 5. Mutabilities.- 6. Imagine This.- 7. Afterword.Piln?s book delivers an always perspicacious and often eloquent set of readings of plays that speak to a cultural moment of distress and crisis by summoning elements and strategies of the grotesque. In so doing, he enriches our understanding of the role of contemporary theatre to hold a distorted mirror, as twere, up to our distorted nature, and perhaps the clairvoyance that paradoxically emerges from that double warping is the true purpose of the grotesque. (Ralf Remshardt, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, Vol 6 (02), November, 2018)OndYej Piln? is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles University, Prague. He is the author of Irony and Identity in Modern Irish Drama and has edited collections of essays and journal issues on subjects ranging from Anglophone drama and Irish literature to cultural memory and structuralist theory. His translations include plays by J.M. Synge, Brian Friel, Martin McDonagh and Enda Walsh.

Following on from the work of art historians andl#m