Scott Boltwood, Brian Friel, Ireland, And the North (Book Review‪)‬

Scott Boltwood, Brian Friel, Ireland, and the North. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xiv + 257 pages. GBP 50.00; USD 95.00 Delightfully, the number of book-length studies on Brian Friel's work has increased once again. After seven monographs (or eight, if we count Richard Pine's first version that evolved into The Diviner), two collections of essays (which came to light too close to this book to be considered in it), and innumerable essays, Scott Boltwood, an American scholar sets out to explore this oeuvre from a political, social, and cultural angle, in accordance with the focus of the host series, Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre. Primarily concentrating on Friel's changing relation to nationalism, he argues that Friel's work can only be understood fully with the recognition of the author's double, 'vexed' engagement with both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and 'the emergence, articulation, and waning of a Northern subaltemity' (p.2). Theoretical considerations of the subaltern form the basis of his approach, which are partly related to postcolonialism but, as Boltwood claims, offer a broader perspective, although he readily applies some postcolonial theoretical observations when necessary, along with other, especially psychoanalytic theories.