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Class, Culture and Tragedy in the Plays of Jez Butterworth

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  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Sean McEvoy

    1. Brighton, UK

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  • First book length study to focus on Butterworth's most recent play, The Ferryman

  • Provides a critical guide to all of Butterworth’s stage plays and traces the evolution of both his dramatic technique and his cultural critique

  • Examines Butterworth's treatment of masculinity and the presentation of his female characters

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 1-32

  3. Yakkety Yak: Mojo (1995)

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 33-63

  4. Exclusion from the Garden: The Night Heron (2002)

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 65-82

  5. Homage: The Winterling (2006)

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 83-102

  6. Drought: Parlour Song (2008)

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 103-119

  7. The Enchanted Wood: Jerusalem (2009)

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 121-156

  8. Time, Myth and Power: The River (2012)

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 157-174

  9. Allusion: The Ferryman (2017)

    • Sean McEvoy
    Pages 175-211

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 213-217
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Keywords

About this book

Jez Butterworth is undoubtedly one of the most popular and commercially successful playwrights to have emerged in Britain in the early twenty-first century. This book, only the second so far to have been written on him, argues that the power of his most acclaimed work comes from a reinvigoration of traditional forms of tragedy expressed in a theatricalized working-class language. Butterworth’s most developed tragedies invoke myth and legend as a figurative resistance to the flat and crushing instrumentalism of contemporary British political and economic culture. In doing so they summon older, resonant narratives which are both popular and high-cultural in order to address present cultural crises in a language and in a form which possess wide appeal. Tracing the development of Butterworth’s work chronologically from Mojo (1995) to The Ferryman (2017), each chapter offers detailed critical readings of a single play, exploring how myth and legend become significant in a variety of ways to Butterworth’s presentation of cultural and personal crisis.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Brighton, UK

    Sean McEvoy

About the author

Sean McEvoy is a Bye Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK. His research specialisms include early modern English theatre and contemporary British and Irish theatre, with a particular interest in tragedy. Previous publications include Hamlet: A Sourcebook (2005), Ben Jonson: Renaissance Dramatist (2007), Theatrical Unrest: Ten Riots in the History of the Stage 1601-2004 (2016), and Tragedy: The Basics (2017). 


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