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John Bull’s Other Eden

John Bull’s Other Eden John Bull's Other Island, Shaw's great Irish play, occupies a pivotal position in Irish literary history. It has served both as a model for individual works and as a starting point for general developments, and it has equally embodied reactions against preceding processes. The present survey will attempt to place the play at the center of a movement both forward and backward in time through the history of Irish literature, without approaching it all too systematically and pedantically. Like all great works of literature, John Bull's Other Island functions simultaneously on several levels of meaning. On one level, it mirrors in various ways the specific social and cultural situation of Ireland at the time when it was written and performed. Dated, with ironical overprecision, to ``twenty minutes to five o'clock on a summer afternoon in 1904,'' it hints at a variety of aspects of the social and economic conditions at the turn of the century1. The play is set at a moment in time between the downfall of Parnell in 1890 and the third Home Rule Bill of 1912, when, under the Conservative Balfour, there seemed to be little hope of Irish self-government. What is more, in 1904, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png SHAW The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies Penn State University Press

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Publisher
Penn State University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Penn State University Press
ISSN
1529-1480
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

John Bull's Other Island, Shaw's great Irish play, occupies a pivotal position in Irish literary history. It has served both as a model for individual works and as a starting point for general developments, and it has equally embodied reactions against preceding processes. The present survey will attempt to place the play at the center of a movement both forward and backward in time through the history of Irish literature, without approaching it all too systematically and pedantically. Like all great works of literature, John Bull's Other Island functions simultaneously on several levels of meaning. On one level, it mirrors in various ways the specific social and cultural situation of Ireland at the time when it was written and performed. Dated, with ironical overprecision, to ``twenty minutes to five o'clock on a summer afternoon in 1904,'' it hints at a variety of aspects of the social and economic conditions at the turn of the century1. The play is set at a moment in time between the downfall of Parnell in 1890 and the third Home Rule Bill of 1912, when, under the Conservative Balfour, there seemed to be little hope of Irish self-government. What is more, in 1904,

Journal

SHAW The Annual of Bernard Shaw StudiesPenn State University Press

Published: Sep 30, 2010

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