Theatre and Residual Culture

Christopher Collins is Assistant Professor of Drama at the University of Nottingham, UK. From 2010-2015 he taught at the Department of Drama in Trinity College Dublin, where the research for this book was conducted. He has published extensively on Synge’s plays and performances, including a companion to The Playboy of the Western World (2016).

• 1. Introduction.- 2. The Emergence of the Playwright.- 3. Flagrant Heathens.- 4. A Christless Creed.- 5. The Cries of Pagan Desperation.- 6. A Sort of Saint.- 7. Christy and the Changeling.- 8. Conclusion.

“The book is extremely well documented, drawing on extensive archival material and proposing careful readings of the philosophical texts which had a lasting influence on Synge’s writings, prominent amongst which is James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890). In historicizing Synge’s plays and taking folk belief seriously, Collins’s book offers an important contribution to postcolonial readings of the Irish Literary Revival and will be of enduring interest to scholars of Synge and of Edwardian Ireland.” (Hélène Lecossois, Theatre Research International, Vol. 42, (3), October, 2017)“While it might appear a purely historical book, Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination ensures that the past is interrogated with the lens of current concerns—theatrically, theoretically, and philosophically." (Brian Singleton, Theatre Journal, Vol. 68, (3), September 2016)