Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Another Irish Antigone: Gendering Justice in Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes

Another Irish Antigone: Gendering Justice in Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes The Burial at Thebes , Seamus Heaney's adaptation of Antigone , was first performed at the centenary celebrations of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 2004. While reviewers read the play exclusively in the context of the post-911 “war on terror,” this essay relocates Heaney's play within the contemporary Irish context, in particular the end of the Northern Irish Troubles. In Heaney's hands, Antigone acts as a metaphor for one of the defining issues of the period: the problem of the past. Heaney is acutely interested in the way in which female voices have remained silenced and sidelined within mainstream debates about the legacy of the Troubles. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig, this essay reads Heaney's play within a series of critical debates about representations of female victimhood, the role of women in transitional justice, and the ongoing importance of tragedy within the Irish literary imagination. Seamus Heaney Antigone gender justice Irish literature http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Another Irish Antigone: Gendering Justice in Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes

Comparative Literature , Volume 69 (3) – Sep 1, 2017

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/another-irish-antigone-gendering-justice-in-seamus-heaney-s-the-burial-t7WW5z9Ysf

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright � Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-4164416
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The Burial at Thebes , Seamus Heaney's adaptation of Antigone , was first performed at the centenary celebrations of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 2004. While reviewers read the play exclusively in the context of the post-911 “war on terror,” this essay relocates Heaney's play within the contemporary Irish context, in particular the end of the Northern Irish Troubles. In Heaney's hands, Antigone acts as a metaphor for one of the defining issues of the period: the problem of the past. Heaney is acutely interested in the way in which female voices have remained silenced and sidelined within mainstream debates about the legacy of the Troubles. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig, this essay reads Heaney's play within a series of critical debates about representations of female victimhood, the role of women in transitional justice, and the ongoing importance of tragedy within the Irish literary imagination. Seamus Heaney Antigone gender justice Irish literature

Journal

Comparative LiteratureDuke University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2017

There are no references for this article.