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- Primary scholarly interest is the writing—both dramatic and non-dramatic texts—of Irish playwright and Fabian sociali... morePrimary scholarly interest is the writing—both dramatic and non-dramatic texts—of Irish playwright and Fabian socialist, Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).
Author of the recently published BERNARD SHAW AND BEATRICE WEBB ON POVERTY AND EQUALITY IN THE MODERN WORLD 1905-1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017),
as well as SHAW SHADOWS: REREADING THE TEXTS OF BERNARD SHAW (University Press of Florida, 2004),
and editor of anthology SHAW AND THE IRISH LITERARY TRADITION (Penn State University Press, 2010).
Co-editor of book series BERNARD SHAW AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES, published by Palgrave Macmillan, and editorial board member of SHAW: THE JOURNAL OF BERNARD SHAW STUDIES (Penn State Univeristy Press).
Author also of introduction to the 2006 Penguin Classics edition of Bernard Shaw's CANDIDA, and have recently completed a biographical history on Shaw and Ireland 1900 -1925.edit
Peter Gahan works from the sartorial context prominent in Shaw’s comedies written between 1908 and 1911 that highlight marriage as a social institution . Civic roles and social responsibilities are ostentatiously signified by costume in... more
Peter Gahan works from the sartorial context prominent in Shaw’s comedies written between 1908 and 1911 that highlight marriage as a social institution . Civic roles and social responsibilities are ostentatiously signified by costume in Getting Married and in Fanny’s First Play ’s framing play. With Misalliance’s underwear manufacturer as well as the underwear retailers in Fanny’s inner play, Shaw throws his comic spotlight on clothing that is more usually concealed, while Granville Barker ’s contemporaneous The Madras House features social ramifications of the clothes manufacturing process and fashion industry in marriages across the classes. All four plays suggest that with marriage, human beings become something more than autonomous individuals, assuming positions within a more complex system of social signification—society.
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In 1909 the Commission into the Poor Law issued Majority and Minority Reports, but the latter, chiefly authored by Beatrice Webb, is what history remembers as the first blueprint for a welfare state. At the same time, Shaw wrote two of... more
In 1909 the Commission into the Poor Law issued Majority and Minority Reports, but the latter, chiefly authored by Beatrice Webb, is what history remembers as the first blueprint for a welfare state. At the same time, Shaw wrote two of his major plays on equality in marriage, Getting Married and Misalliance, highlighting his observation that social equality would be achieved when any two people, no matter what their class background, could marry freely; such social equality for Shaw is predicated on economic equality. As in Major Barbara, Shaw went back for inspiration to the origins of drama in Ancient Greece to tap into the Dionysian energies being released among his younger audience in their bid for new freedoms.
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The Webbs and Shaw founded the New Statesman in 1913, which soon became a leading political weekly. Shaw was one of the major funders of the new publication, but soon came into conflict with the New Statesman’s editor, Clifford Sharp, who... more
The Webbs and Shaw founded the New Statesman in 1913, which soon became a leading political weekly. Shaw was one of the major funders of the new publication, but soon came into conflict with the New Statesman’s editor, Clifford Sharp, who in some respects was more a Liberal than a socialist. Shaw nevertheless continued his financing. Beatrice Webb now assumed a leading role in the Fabian Society, and started the Fabian Research Department, with Shaw as chairman. In May Shaw gave his second major lecture on equality, probably the most important for making equality part of political discourse ever since. We also touch briefly on Shaw’s lectures on religion and equality, in which he advocated a religion of equality.
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Research Interests: Art History and Art
Pygmalion, Shaw’s most popular play, opened, enabling his continued funding of the New Statesman. Shaw’s affair of the previous two years with its star, Mrs Patrick Campbell, fizzled out sometime before she married George Cornwallis-West... more
Pygmalion, Shaw’s most popular play, opened, enabling his continued funding of the New Statesman. Shaw’s affair of the previous two years with its star, Mrs Patrick Campbell, fizzled out sometime before she married George Cornwallis-West during the stormy rehearsals. New revolts occurred in the Fabian Society on the part of younger members more interested in Guild Socialism than the old Fabians’ Collectivization. Shaw calmed the troubled waters before war broke out at the end of the summer, when he undertook two major tasks, writing his great anti-militaristic tract Common Sense About the War and preparing a major six-lecture series on ‘Redistribution of Income’, introducing that phrase into political and economic discourse. We examine in detail Shaw’s notes for, and newspaper reports of, the lectures.
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... Hesione; Daniel Mas-sey, a dramatically handsome and impressive Hector; Barbara Murray, an attractively middle-aged Ariadne; and Lesley Ann Down, a ... comedy of high quality, a Shavian female version of Ben Jonson's Volpone... more
... Hesione; Daniel Mas-sey, a dramatically handsome and impressive Hector; Barbara Murray, an attractively middle-aged Ariadne; and Lesley Ann Down, a ... comedy of high quality, a Shavian female version of Ben Jonson's Volpone that also steals back from Noel Coward the ...
Gahan's path-breaking book rereads Shaw's writing, dramatic and non-dramatic, against the background of critical theory in order to reassess its radical influence in both its own time and ours. Though sometimes dismissed as merely witty,... more
Gahan's path-breaking book rereads Shaw's writing, dramatic and non-dramatic, against the background of critical theory in order to reassess its radical influence in both its own time and ours. Though sometimes dismissed as merely witty, Shaw should be considered one of the progenitors of contemporary literary studies, Gahan says, in that his work actually allows for ideas of theorists such as Derrida and Lacan.
Gahan first considers Shaw's poststructuralist pioneering thinking in a general, philosophical way. Taking a fresh and thoughtful look at a wealth of readings, he examines Shaw's criticism and autobiographical writing, in which questions of authorship and subjectivity were crucial. Gahan looks at essays on music, science, and politics and at Shaw's critique of Darwinian theory, in which he calls for a new metaphysics within the discourse of science. In concentrating on his less familiar plays, Gahan shows how Shaw incorporated themes like writing, language, meaning, and authorship into his playwriting, while acknowledging an awareness of the subjectivity of human experience in general and of the writer's experience in particular. For the first time, the play cycle Back to Methuselah--the work Shaw considered his magnum opus--is examined as central to the oeuvre.
This book heralds a major shift in the future of Shaw studies, restoring Shaw to his rightful place as a major intellectual figure and writer, as one of the most important authors and dramatists of the early 20th century. And it positions the Shaw text as pivotal in the historical break in Western culture between Victorian and modern worlds.
Gahan first considers Shaw's poststructuralist pioneering thinking in a general, philosophical way. Taking a fresh and thoughtful look at a wealth of readings, he examines Shaw's criticism and autobiographical writing, in which questions of authorship and subjectivity were crucial. Gahan looks at essays on music, science, and politics and at Shaw's critique of Darwinian theory, in which he calls for a new metaphysics within the discourse of science. In concentrating on his less familiar plays, Gahan shows how Shaw incorporated themes like writing, language, meaning, and authorship into his playwriting, while acknowledging an awareness of the subjectivity of human experience in general and of the writer's experience in particular. For the first time, the play cycle Back to Methuselah--the work Shaw considered his magnum opus--is examined as central to the oeuvre.
This book heralds a major shift in the future of Shaw studies, restoring Shaw to his rightful place as a major intellectual figure and writer, as one of the most important authors and dramatists of the early 20th century. And it positions the Shaw text as pivotal in the historical break in Western culture between Victorian and modern worlds.
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Page 1. Peter Gahan COLONIAL LOCATIONS OF CONTESTED SPACE ANOJOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND The grand narratives of nineteenth century historicism on which its claims to universalism were founded - evolutionism ...
Research Interests: Literary studies and Shaw
... look for Shaw's major contributions to the history of Irish political thought. What is to be found there? We can list the major events of the period: the Third Home Rule Bill of 1912, the Dublin Lockout of 1913, the Easter... more
... look for Shaw's major contributions to the history of Irish political thought. What is to be found there? We can list the major events of the period: the Third Home Rule Bill of 1912, the Dublin Lockout of 1913, the Easter Rising and the executions of 1916, the execution of Roger ...
Research Interests: Literary studies and Shaw
... illustrations for them, right from the publication in 1888 of the first edition of Fabian Essays, which he edited and for which he got Walter Crane to design the frontispiece, through the best known of his illustrated books, The ...... more
... illustrations for them, right from the publication in 1888 of the first edition of Fabian Essays, which he edited and for which he got Walter Crane to design the frontispiece, through the best known of his illustrated books, The ... ished" book to his patron, Mainardo del Cavalcanti. ...
Research Interests: Literary studies and Shaw
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... manner. For Shaw, meaning is generated by conflicting conceptsand contexts. ... Here are some of the allusions: classical drama the "Stagirite" (Aristotle) Shakespearean drama inversion of Romeo and Juliet... more
... manner. For Shaw, meaning is generated by conflicting conceptsand contexts. ... Here are some of the allusions: classical drama the "Stagirite" (Aristotle) Shakespearean drama inversion of Romeo and Juliet restoration drama cf. Sheridan's ...
Research Interests: Literary studies and Shaw
Bernard Shaw's attention to the politics of his native country of Ireland was most persistent during the years from the 1912 Third Home Rule bill, through the 1916 Rising, the 1917 Irish Convention, and the years of the Anglo-Irish War... more
Bernard Shaw's attention to the politics of his native country of Ireland was most persistent during the years from the 1912 Third Home Rule bill, through the 1916 Rising, the 1917 Irish Convention, and the years of the Anglo-Irish War 1918-1921. This article tracks Shaw's various involvements in matters Irish during this last period.