Buffoonery in Irish Drama

The Author: Kathleen Heininge received her doctorate from University of California Davis and is now Assistant Professor of Writing/Literature at George Fox University in Oregon, where she teaches British and world literature and women’s studies. She publishes primarily on Irish literature, especially drama.

«This eminently readable study illuminates a lively panorama of twentieth-century Irish plays, examining them against the context of Ireland’s rich (and changing) culture and demonstrating the pervasiveness of central concerns. Kathleen Heininge’s thought-provoking approach is sophisticated and sensible. She has a wide-ranging familiarity with key theoretical and dramatic texts, a sharp awareness of audience and performance, and an ability to provide a coherent synthesis helpful for a range of readers. Heininge’s innovative analysis yields new ways of thinking about familiar plays and introduces a variety of less familiar plays about which we should begin to think. Buffoonery in Irish Drama is essential reading as background from which to consider the emergence of twenty-first-century Irish drama.» (Helen Lojek, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Boise State University, Idaho)