Class, Culture and Tragedy in the Plays of Jez Butterworth [Paperback]

Jez Butterworth is undoubtedly one of the most popular and commercially successful playwrights to have emerged in Britain in the early twenty-first century. This book, only the second so far to have been written on him, argues that the power of his most acclaimed work comes from a reinvigoration of traditional forms of tragedy expressed in a theatricalized working-class language. Butterworths most developed tragedies invoke myth and legend as a figurative resistance to the flat and crushing instrumentalism of contemporary British political and economic culture. In doing so they summon older, resonant narratives which are both popular and high-cultural in order to address present cultural crises in a language and in a form which possess wide appeal. Tracing the development of Butterworths work chronologically from Mojo (1995) to The Ferryman (2017), each chapter offers detailed critical readings of a single play, exploring how myth and legend become significantin a variety of ways to Butterworths presentation of cultural and personal crisis.

1. Introduction.- 2. Yakkety Yak: Mojo (1995).- 3. Exclusion from the Garden: The Night Heron (2002).- 4. Homage: The Winterling (2006).- 5. Drought: Parlour Song (2008).- 6. The Enchanted Wood: Jerusalem (2009).- 7. Time, Myth and Power: The River (2012).- 8. Allusion: The Ferryman (2017).

Sean McEvoy is a Bye Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK. His research specialisms include early modern English theatre and contemporary British and Irish theatre, with a particular interest in tragedy. Previous publications include Hamlet: A Sourcebook (2005), Ben Jonson: Renaissance Dramatist (2007), Theatrical Unrest: Ten RiotlSµ