Introduction: Friel, criticism, and theory

Summary

The critical consensus towards Brian Friel's drama and its relationship to the Irish Republic's form of nationalism has evolved significantly since the first studies of his career appeared in the 1970s. The initial discussions by D. E. S. Maxwell and George O'Brien argued that the playwright espoused a relatively unproblematized Irish nationalism, and even as late as 1988 Ulf Dantanus' Brian Friel positions the playwright squarely within the tradition of Joyce, Synge, and O'Casey: “the habitat, heritage and history of Ireland have made him an Irish writer” (Dantanus, 20). Yet, in that same year the playwright's ideological ambivalence to the Irish Republic was first posited by Shaun Richards and David Cairns in their broad revisionist interrogation of Irish literature (Cairns and Richards, Writing Ireland, 148–9). In her 1994 study of the early Field Day Theatre Company and Friel's collaborations with it, Marilynn Richtarik recognizes that their ideological objective was to articulate a relationship to Irish nationalism “for which there was, as yet, no name” (Richtarik, Acting, 254). By the late 1990s, only the most naive critics would read Friel's career within a straightforward nationalistic framework. This recognition of Friel's problematic relationship to conventional constructs of Irishness has deprived the critical community of a vocabulary to discuss his career; while he cannot be accommodated comfortably by Republican nationalism, he strenuously opposes the Protestant domination of the Northern Irish province and rejects its brand of Unionism.