Adresse
Centre Culturel Irlandaiscontact
Titre : | Reflections on the Future (1999) |
Auteurs : | Claire CONNOLLY, Auteur |
Type de document : | Article |
Dans : | Etudes irlandaises (Vol 24 n 2 1999) |
Article en page(s) : | p. 115-125 |
Langues: | Anglais |
Mots-clés : | |
Résumé : | This essay speculates as to the meanings of Edmund Burke's reflections on eighteenth century France for twentieth century Ireland. Gar O'Donnell, the protagonist of Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come! repeatedly quotes from a famous passage in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). First performed in 1964, Philadelphia? Here I Come! uses lines from Burke's elegy for ancient regime Europe to evoke multiple memories both for the protagonist and the audience of the play. This essay argues that rather than just enabling Friel to index decayed tradition (Seamus Deane's suggestion), the Reflection is a text turned to the future. I show how, read anachronistically, the Reflections may be interpreted as a comment on later moments in Irish history, in this case the Act of Union with Britain, passed in January 1801. Understood as a proleptic comment on the Union, the Reflections enables a new account of that legislative event as a cultural and political fantasy of a revolutionary nature |
Pays de publication : | France |
Lieu de publication : | Villeneuve d'Ascq |
Mention de responsabilité : | Claire Connolly |
Fonds : | Médiathèque |