SUPRA - REALISTIC ELEMENTS IN SELECTED PLAYS OF BRIAN FRIEL

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the dramatic contribution of Brian Friel to the contemporary Irish drama from a technical perspective and to carry out a study of his bold experimental ventures in nine of his plays. Although realism clearly stamps the majority of his drama, Friel has a recurrent tendency to liberate himself from the fetters of traditional dramaturgy. Friel's supra-realism relies on two elements that may seem paradoxical: classical Greek drama and the experiments of modern dramatists. The study at hand will attempt to answer why he keeps on resorting to supra-realism shifting from one form to another, adopting the selective attitude of the post modernist. It will also furnish the reader with the variety of methods and techniques that influenced Friel's drama. These include expressionism, Brecht's epic theatre, the absurd theatre, the "teatro grotesco" of Pirandello as well as the art of T.S. Eliot, Wagner and Tennnssee Williams. A study of the themes will also be indispensable for Friel's drama where form and content are inseparable. The four main chapters wi II trace the development of Friel's supra-realistic technique throughout his dramatic career beginning from the 1960s up to 1990s.

Brian Friel ( 1929_ ) is an Irish playwright who is unanimously regarded as Ireland's first living dramatist. His plays have won an international acclaim in world theatres. He began his life as a teacher in primary and intermediate schools in Derry. His writing career stmied in 1952 when he began to write short stories for the New Yorker. However, he decided to abandon the shoti story form for playwriting. and his dramatic career was launched in 1958 when the BBC produced his two radio plays: A Sort of Freedom and To This Hard House. In 1962 the Abbey Theatre produced his first stage play, The Enemy Within.