The Snow Is General All Over Ireland: Irish Modernism and Northern European Drama

Abstract

"This essay [draws] connections or parallels between Irish modernists and their continental counterparts. What it has tried to demonstrate, in the process, is that the most famous, memorable, haunting and climactic moments in early Irish modernism - in Cathleen ni Houlihan, “The Dead,” and Riders to the Sea - offer sustained dialogue with modernist drama being written and staged elsewhere in northern Europe. This dialogue crosses generic barriers and apparently insuperable linguistic barriers as well. Indeed, it on occasion crosses the barrier separating human language from other sign systems, the world of numbers, account books, and sock diagrams. Not coincidentally, these famous moments themselves all involve an acknowledgement of, renewed openness or address to a larger world."