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Palgrave Macmillan

Queering W. B. Yeats and Gabriele D’Annunzio

Modernist Playwrights

  • Book
  • © 2024

Overview

Authors:
  1. Zsuzsanna Balázs

    1. Óbuda University, Budapest, Hungary

    View author publications

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  • Provides the first fully theorised queer and comparative reading of Yeats’s and D’Annunzio’s drama
  • Draws on a combination of comparative, queer, postcolonial and dramaturgical approaches
  • Examines the relationship between sexual politics and representations of sexuality in Irish and Italian theatre

Part of the book series: New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature (NDIIAL)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Zsuzsanna Balázs
    Pages 1-44

  3. Family, Normativity, and the Will to Escape

    • Zsuzsanna Balázs
    Pages 45-99

  4. Moral Prudery, Respectability, and Broken Intimacies

    • Zsuzsanna Balázs
    Pages 101-143

  5. Sadomasochistic Attachments: Reverse Power and Erotic Stimulations

    • Zsuzsanna Balázs
    Pages 145-189

  6. Defiant Dykes: New Women against Patriarchy

    • Zsuzsanna Balázs
    Pages 191-232

  7. Conclusions

    • Zsuzsanna Balázs
    Pages 233-246

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 247-258
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Keywords

About this book

Queering W. B. Yeats and Gabriele D’Annunzio: Modernist Playwrights challenges the general resistance in scholarship and queer studies to approach Yeats and D’Annunzio through a queer lens because of their controversial affiliations with fascism and elitism, their heterosexuality and their venerated canonical status. This book provides the first fully theorised queer and comparative reading of Yeats’s and D’Annunzio’s drama. It offers the novel contention that due to their increasing involvement in queer and feminist subcultures, their plays feature feelings that are associated with queer historiography and generate ideas that began to be theorised by queer studies more than half a century after the composition of the plays. Moreover, it uncovers an alert, subversive and often coded social commentary in eight key dramatic texts by each playwright and at the same time highlights the thus far neglected commonalities between the plays and the queer historical as well as cultural contexts of these two prominent modernists.

Reviews

Queering W. B. Yeats and Gabriele D’Annunzio is an important new study that is revelatory not only for what it reveals about these two important playwrights, but also for its innovative approach to methodology. As modernist playwrights, Yeats and D’Annunzio adopted a variety of approaches – both overlapping and contrasting – to their dramaturgy and stagecraft, and this book sheds new light on the political and aesthetic consequences of their work. Of even greater value, however, is Zsuzsanna Balázs’s extraordinarily deft and original application of queer theory to these writers’ dramas and legacies. The overall impact is to open up new approaches to research in modernism, theatre studies, queer theory – and beyond.

-Prof. Patrick Lonergan, University of Galway, Ireland

Queering W. B. Yeats and Gabriele D’Annunzio: Modernist Playwrights offers a fresh, creative, and highly illuminating approach to the work of two essential yet perplexing modern European playwrights. Reading Yeats through the lens of queer theory unlocks some of the contradictions of his treatment of gender and sexuality, demonstrating that they remain profoundly anti-normative and anti-authoritarian even when citing heteronormative or misogynistic tropes. In addition to provocative and generative readings of some of Yeats's and D’Annunzio’s most difficult plays, Balazs’s book offers a treasure trove of information about modernist theatrical production and the performers who brought these dramas to life. The questions raised in this book about the arts and authority could not possibly be more timely. This book will be essential reading for anyone drawn to the fascinating world of modern European drama.

-Susan Cannon Harris, University of Notre Dame



Authors and Affiliations

  • Óbuda University, Budapest, Hungary

    Zsuzsanna Balázs

About the author

Dr. Zsuzsanna Balázs is currently Assistant Professor at Óbuda University in Budapest, Hungary. She obtained her Ph.D in Drama and Theatre at the University of Galway, Ireland in 2021. She has written extensively on modern Irish and Italian drama and theatre through a queer and gender studies lens.

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