Daniel Keith Jernigan – författare

Tom Stoppard is justly famous for his innovative theatrical techniques. Daniel Jernigan argues that while much of Tom Stoppard's early work (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Inspector Hound, for instance) is postmodern, the remainder of his career essentially tracks backward from there--becoming "late modernist" in the 1970s (Travesties) and fully modernist in the 80s and 90s (The Real Thing and Arcadia). This pattern also makes sense of Stoppard's recent and uncharacteristic foray into dramatic realism with The Coast of Utopia (2002) and Rock 'n' Roll (2006), at which point the playwright seems to embrace the more straightforward rhetorical advantages of literary realism.

In the same spirit as his novels, O''Brien''s plays are speculative, inventive, wickedly funny, and a delightful addition to his collected works—now available at last: this volume collects Flann O''Brien''s dramatic work into a single volume, including Thirst, Faustus Kelly, and The Insect Play: A Rhapsody on Saint Stephen''s Green. It also includes several plays and teleplays that have never before seen print, including The Dead Spit of Kelly (of which a film version is in production by Michael Garland), The Boy from Ballytearim, and An Scian (only recently discovered), as well as teleplays from the RTÉ series O''Dea''s Your Man and Th'' Oul Lad of Kilsalaher.