Martin McDonagh In Irish Context

Martin McDonagh is one of the most famous contemporary Anglo-Irish playwrights, who was born in the 1970 and began to write plays in the 1990s. His inheritance and subversion of Irish traditions and his unique and bold postmodernist writing style attract the attention of many critics. His plays are mostly set against the West of Ireland, filled with isolated and perverted characters and story plotlines featuring triviality, violence, blood-shedding, darkness and comic elements. Though onstage performances of his plays have received tremendous applauds and financial success, considerable suspicion heaps on the Irishness of his plays. Labels such as "disfiguring Irish people", "regenerating old Irish stereotypes", "accomplice of British colonialists" and "Neo-colonialist" become the major points where fierce debates extend.In response to criticisms interrogating McDonagh's Irishness, this thesis aims to justify his position in traditional Irish literary parameters and to explore the representation of his concerns for Irish issues, by closely analyzing The Beauty Queen of Leenane. As the first play of The Leenane Trilogy. The Beauty Queen ofLeenane carries distinctive significance. The play sets itself in the West of Ireland in the end of 1980s and centers on a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship which features gloominess, blood and maltreatment and which ends with a matricide. Since its premiere in 1996, it has been receiving applause from the audience. And it has also been adapted and put onto stage in various countries.This thesis first reads the play closely, by applying gothic traditions in Irish literature and gothic concepts of "uncanny" and "abject". It aims to detect the themes of spiritual paralysis, interpersonal isolation and internal terror in McDonagh's gothic construction of the two female protagonists. The thesis then proceeds with an inter-textual reading between Maureen's "American Dream" and the "Argentina Dream" of Eveline, a female protagonist from McDonagh's Irish predecessor, James Joyce. By further exploring the spiritual-paralysis-theme, McDonagh could be put into the parameters of Irish literary traditions. The third major part relates the two female protagonists with the ancient Irish myth of Old Hag. The inter-textual reading further tests McDonagh's innovative application, modernizing and subverting of Irish traditions.Through textual and inter-textual readings, the thesis concludes that McDonagh has inherited the abundant literary and cultural traditions of Ireland and that he is one of the new-generation Irish playwrights. In The Beauty Queen of Leenane, he deftly makes use of, rewrites and subverts Irish traditions. Together with his unique and intriguing postmodernist representation skills, his plays not only reflect the individual psyche and social landscape in Celtic-Tiger-era Ireland, but the trend of diversification against the background of globalization.