The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge

John Millington Synge was a leading literary figure of the IrishRevival who played a significant role in the founding of Dublin'sAbbey Theatre in 1904. This Companion offers a comprehensiveintroduction to the whole range of Synge's work from well-knownplays like Riders to the Sea, The Well of the Saints and ThePlayboy of the Western World, to his influential prose work TheAran Islands. The essays provide detailed and insightful analysesof individual texts, as well as perceptive reflections on hisengagements with the Irish language, processes of decolonisation,gender, modernism and European culture. Critical accounts oflandmark productions in Ireland and America are also included. Witha guide to further reading and a chronology, this book willintroduce students of drama, postcolonial studies, and Irishstudies as well as theatregoers to one of the most influential andcontroversial dramatists of the twentieth century.