John Millington Synge: Criticism



Early notices
  • Obituary, in The Irish Times (25 March 1909), accompanied by a leader on the subject and a report on the ‘Funeral of Mr J. M. Synge’ (pp.6 & 8).
  • George A. Birmingham, ‘The Literary Movement in Ireland’, in Fortnight Review, LXXXII (Dec. 2 1907), pp.947-57.
  • Mary Colum, ‘John Synge’, in Irish Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 1911), pp.39-42.
  • Warren Barton Blake, ‘A Great Irish Playwright - John M. Synge’, in The Theatre (June 1911), pp.202-04.
  • W. B. Yeats, ‘J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time’, in The Forum, XLVI [New York] (August 1911), pp.179-200; rep. in Essays (London: Macmillan 1924) [therein dated 14 Sept. 1910].
  • Jack B. Yeats, ‘With Synge in Connemara’, in W. B. Yeats, [ed.,] Synge and the Ireland of His Time ... &c.] (Dublin: Cuala Press 1911) [var. ‘Note Concerning a Walk with Synge through Connemara’].
  • John Masefield, ‘John M. Synge’, in Contemporary Review (April 1911), pp.470-78.
  • Francis Bickley, J. M. Synge and the Irish Dramatic Movement (London: Constable; NY: Houghton Mifflin 1912), 96pp. [see extract].
  • P[ercival] P[resland] Howe, J. M. Synge: A Critical Study (London: Martin Secker; NY: Mitchell Kennerley 1912), 216pp., Do ., [rep. edn.] (Conn: Greenwood Publ. [1995]) [ded. to Maire O’Neill - ‘Nora, Cathleen, Molly, Pegeen, Deirdre’].
  • Maurice Bourgeois, John Millington Synge and the Irish Theatre (London: Constable 1913), xiv, 338pp., [17pp., ills., ports.]; Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: Haskell House, 1966), xiv, 337pp., and Do. (NY; Benjamin Blom 1968), xvi + 334pp. [Bibl., pp.251-314].
  • Lady Gregory, Our Irish Theatre (NY: Putnam 1913), esp. pp.119-39 [rep. from The English Review (March 1913), pp.556-66].
  • Robert de Flers, Figaro (14 Dec. 1913), p.4 [review of performance of French translation of Playboy ].
  • John Masefield, John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections with Biographical Notes by John Masefield (NY: Macmillan 1915), 35pp. [rep. in Masefield, Recent Prose, 1924, pp.163-87].
  • Barrett H. Clarke, ‘The Playboy in Paris’, in Colonnade, 11 (Jan. 1916), cp.23.
  • Ernest A. Boyd, ‘The Impulse Towards Folk Drama: J. M. Synge and Padraic Colum’ [Chap. V], in The Contemporary Drama of Ireland (Boston: Little Brown 1917), pp.88-121; espec. 2: ‘The Plays of J. M. Synge’ (pp.92-110.]
  • Padraic Colum, ‘Memories of Synge’, in The Literary Review [of New York Evening Post ] II (4 June 1921), pp.1-2.
  • Yeats, ‘More Memories’, in The Dial, LXXIII [Chicago] (Sept. 1922), pp.283-302 [incl. his description of the meeting with Synge in Paris, pp.298-301], Do ., rep. in The Trembling of the Veil 1922), and in Autobiographies (1926), &c.
  • Hugh l’A Fausset, ‘Synge and Tragedy’, in Fortnight Review, CXV (Feb. 1 1924), pp.258-73.
  • ‘CHH’ [Cherrie Matheson], ‘John Synge as I Knew Him’, in The Irish Statesman, 5 July 1924, pp.532, 534 [prefaced [by] Yeats’s ‘A Memory of Synge’].
  • Arthur Lynch, ‘Synge’, a Letter to the Editor in The Irish Statesman (20 Oct. 1928), p.131.
  • W. B. Yeats, ‘The Death of Synge and Other Pages from an Old Diary’, in The Dial [Chicago], April 1928, pp.271-88; Do ., rep. as ‘... and Other Passages... (&c.), in The London Mercury, XVII, April 1928, pp.637-52, and Do., rep. as The Death of Synge, and Other Passages from an Old Diary (Churchtown, Dundrum [Dublin]: Cuala Press 1928) [later ‘The Death of Synge: Extracts from a Diary Kept in 1909’, in Autobiographies, Macmillan 1955, pp.499-527].
  • S[amuel] Synge, Letters to my Daughter: Memories of John Millington Synge (Talbot 1932) [var. 1st edn. 1931].
  • Frank O’Connor, ‘Synge’, in The Irish Theatre, ed. Lennox Robinson (London: Macmillan 1939), xiv, 220pp.
 
Standard biographies & major studies
  • Daniel Corkery, Synge and the Anglo-Irish Literature: A Study (Cork UP; London: Longmans, Green 1931; Cork UP 1966).
  • David H. Greene & Edward M. Stephens, J. M. Synge 1871-1909 (NY: Macmillan 1959; 1961), x, 321pp.; Notes, p303ff.; Published Works, p.308ff.; Index, p.311ff.
  • D. Gerstenberger, John Millington Synge (NY: Twayne UP 1964).
  • Ann Saddlemyer, J. M. Synge and Modern Comedy (Dublin: Dolmen 1968).
  • Robin Skelton, J. M. Synge and His World (London: Thames & Hudson; NY: Viking 1971), 144pp., ills.
  • Andrew Carpenter, ed., My Uncle John: Edward Stephens’s Life of J. M. Synge (OUP 1974), xviii, 222pp., index [see contents].
  • Nicholas Grene, Synge: A Critical Study Interpretation of the Plays (NJ: Rowman & Littlefield; London: Macmillan 1975).
  • Weldon Thornton, Synge and the Western Mind (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979), 169pp. [see contents].
  • Declan Kiberd, Synge and the Irish Language (London: Macmillan 1979), and Do ., [2nd edn.] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1993), 294pp. [available at Google Books - online; accessed 24.09.2021].
  • Mary C. King, The Drama of J. M. Synge (London: Fourth Estate 1985).
  • David M. Kiely, J. M. Synge: A Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994), 305pp. [xiii; Index, p.295ff.]; ded. to William “nil desperandum” Williams]
  • W. J. McCormack, The Fool of the Family: The Life and Death of J. M. Synge (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2000), 499pp.
  • Brian Cliff & Nicholas Grene, eds., Synge and Edwardian Ireland (OUP 2011), 288pp. [see contents].
 
Paper collections
  • Thomas R. Whitaker, ed., Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Playboy of the Western World (NJ: Prentice Hall 1969).
  • Maurice Harmon, ed., J. M. Synge Centenary Papers, 1971 (Dublin: Dolmen 1972), xvi+202pp [incl. Seán Ó Tuama, ‘Synge and the Idea of a National Literature’, pp.1-17; Alan J. Bliss, ‘The Language of Synge’, cp.35; Thomas Kilroy, ‘Synge and Modernism’, pp.167-79, &c.].
  • Suheil B Bushrui, ed., Sunshine and the Moon’s Delight, A Centenary Tribute to John Millington Synge (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1972) [incl. Ann Saddlemyer, ‘Art, Nature and “The Prepared Personality”, A Reading of The Aran Islands and Related Writings’, pp.107-20; Robert O’Driscoll, ‘Yeats’s Conception of Synge’, pp.159-71].
  • Ronald Ayling, ed., J. M. Synge: [Collection of Critical Essays on ] Four Plays (London: Macmillan 1992).
  • Nicholas Grene, ed., Interpreting Synge: Essays from the Synge Summer School 1991-2000 (Dublin: Lilliput 2000), 220pp. [see contents].
  • Claire Culleton, ed., Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive (London: Palgrave 2009) [incls. Justin Carville, ‘Visible Others: Photography and Romantic Ethnograhy in Ireland’].
 
Bibliographies & reference
  • [Q. auth.,] ‘A Check List of First Editions of Works by John Millington Synge and George William Russell’, TCD Annual Bulletin (1956), pp.4-9.
  • M. J. MacManus, A Bibliography of Books Written by John Millington Synge [Bibliograpies of Irish Authors, 4] (Dublin: Talbot Press 1930) [prev. in Dublin Magazine, n.s., V (Oct.-Dec. 1930), pp.47-51].
  • Sean O’Faolain, ‘John Millington Synge’ (1871-1909), in The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. F. W. Bateson, III (Cambridge UP [1967]), pp.1062-63.
  • E. A. Kopper, Jnr., ed., John Millington Synge, A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K. Hall; London: George Prior 1970).
  • Paul M. Levitt, J. M. Synge: Bibliography of Published Criticism (Dublin: IUP 1974), 224pp.
  • E. H. Mikhail, J. M. Synge: A Bibliography of Criticism (London: Macmillan; Totowa, NJ: Rowman &c. 1975), 214pp.
  • E. A. Kopper, A J. M. Synge Literary Companion (NY: Greenwood Press 1988).
  • P. J. Mathews, ed., The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge (Cambridge UP 2009) [contribs. Mathews; Oona Frawley; Shaun Richards [Playboy]; Mary Burke [Well of the Saints, The Tinker’s Wedding]; Elaine Sisson [The Aran Islands and travel essays]; Declan Kiberd [Deirdre of the Sorrows]; Ben Levitas [European encounters]; Alan Titley [Irish language]; Susan Cannon Harris [Gender]; C. L. Innes [Postcolonial]; Gregory Dobbin [Irish Modernism]; Nicholas Grene [Synge in Performance]; Brenda Murphy [Synge in America]; Anthony Roche [Contemporary Irish Drama] - available online; accessed 09.06.2019].
 
 
Critical Studies: Annual Listing
1940-
  • David H. Greene, ‘An Adequate Text of J. M. Synge’, in Modern Language Notes, LXI [Baltimore] (Nov. 1946), pp.466-67.
  • Benedict Kiely, ‘Liam O’Flaherty: A Story of Discontent’, in The Month, [n.s.] II (Sept. 1949), c.p.185.[remarks the O’Flaherty was essentially a stranger in mainland Ireland].
  • Synge Special Number, The Envoy, No. 16 (March 1951), [includes contribs. by Patrick Kavanagh, Owen Quinn, et al.].
  • Irving D. Suss, ‘The Playboy Riots’, in Irish Writing, 18 (March 1952), pp.39-42.
  • Donald Davie, ‘On the Poetic Diction of J. M. Synge’, Dublin Magazine, Vol. 27 [new series] (1952), pp.32-8.
  • Raymond Williams, ‘J. M. Synge’, in Drama: From Ibsen to Eliot (London: Chatto and Windus 1952), pp.154-74.
  • Denis Donoghue, ‘Synge, Riders to the Sea, A Study’ in Irish University Review, 1 (Summer 1955), pp.52-58 [rep. in Clark, op. cit. infra 1970].
  • Herbert Howarth, The Irish Writers 1880-1940 (London: Rockliff 1958) [q.pp.]
1960 -
  • Alan Price, Synge and Anglo-Irish Drama (London: Methuen 1961), xii, 236pp.
  • Patricia Meyer Spacks, ‘The Making of the Playboy’, in Modern Drama IV (Dec. 1961), pp.314-23.
  • T. R. Henn, intro. to.“The Playboy of the Western World”, in From the Plays and Poems of J. M. Synge, ed. Henn (London: Methuen & Co. 1963), pp.56-67.
  • Michael J. Sidnell, ‘Synge’s Playboy and the Champion of Ulster’, in Dalhousie Review, XLV (Spring 1965), pp.51-59 [available at Dalhousie - pdf; accessed 23.09.2021]
  • Donna Gerstenberger, John Millington Synge (Boston: Twayne Publ. 1964), and Do. [rev. edn. 1990], xii, 144pp.
  • Denis Johnston, John Millington Synge (NY & London: Columbia UP 1965), 48pp.
  • Howard D. Pearce, ‘Synge’s Playboy as Mock-Christ’, in Modern Drama, 8, 3 (Dec. 1965), pp.303-10.
  • Robin Skelton and Ann Saddlemyer, eds., The World of W. B. Yeats (Seattle: Washington UP 1965).
  • Ann Saddlemyer, ‘Rabelais Versus à Kempis: The Art of J. M. Synge’, in Komos, 1 (1967), pp.85-96.
  • Diane E. Bessie, ‘Little Hound in Mayo’, in Dalhousie Review, XLVIII (Autumn 1968), pp.372-83.
  • James F. Kilroy, ‘The Playboy as Poet’, in PMLA, LXXXIII (May 1968), pp.439-42.
  • Malcolm Pittock, ‘Riders to the Sea ‘; in English Studies, XLIX (Oct. 1968), pp.445-49.
  • Stanley Sultan, ‘A Joycean Look at The Playboy of the Western World ‘, in The Celtic Master, ed. Maurice Harmon [1st Joyce Symposium in Dublin 1967] (Dolmen Press 1969), pp.45-55.
  • Paul M. Levitt, ‘The Structural Craftsmanship of J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea’, in Éire-Ireland, 4, 1 (Spring 1969), pp. 53-61.
1970-
  • Jeanne Flood, ‘The Pre-Aran Writings of J. M. Synge’, in Éire-Ireland, 5, 3 (Autumn 1970), pp.63-80.
  • Seán McMahon, ‘Clay and Worms’, in Éire-Ireland, 5, 4 (Winter 1970), pp.116-43.
  • James F. Kilroy, The Playboy Riots [Irish Theatre Series, No. 4] (Dublin: Dolmen 1971), 101pp.
  • Robin Skelton, The Writings of J. M. Synge (NY: Bobbs-Merrill; London: Thames & Hudson 1971), 190pp.
  • Robin Skelton, Remembering Synge [Poetry Ireland Edns.] (Poetry Ireland 1971).
  • W. R. Rodgers, Irish Literary Portraits (London: BBC 1972), “J. M. Synge,” pp.94-115.
  • S. B. Bushrui, ‘Synge and some Companions with a Note Concerning a Walk through Connemara with Jack Yeats, Yeats Studies No. 2 (1972), pp.18-34.
  • Balahantra Rajan, Yeats, Synge and the Tragic Understanding’, in Yeats Studies No. 2 (1972), pp.66-79.
  • Malcolm Kelsall, ‘Synge in Aran’, in Irish University Review, V, 2 (Autumn 1975), pp.254-70.
  • Mikhail, E. H, ed., J. M. Synge: Interviews and Recollections (Basingstoke 1977), 138pp. [see contents].
  • Suheil Bushrui, ‘Synge and the Doors of Perception’, in Andrew Carpenter, eds., Place, Personality, and the Irish Writer (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977), pp.97-120 [var. Ann Saddlemyer]
  • Robin Skelton, ‘The Politics of J. M. Synge’, in The Massachusetts Review, 18, 1 (Spring 1977), pp.7-22 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/25088702].
  • K[atherine] Worth, The Irish Drama of Europe, From Yeats to Beckett (London: Athlone Press 1978).
  • Paul F. Botheroyd, ‘Tinkers, Tramps and Travellers in Early Twentieth-century Irish Drama and Society’, in Studies in Anglo-Irish Literature, ed. Heinz Kosok (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann 1982), [espec. p.162].
  • Mary C. King, The Drama of J. M. Synge (Syracuse UP 1985), 229pp. [see contents].
  • Robert Welch, ‘J. M. Synge: “Transfigured Realism”’, Changing States: Transformations in Modern Irish Writing (London: Routledge 1993), pp.80-118.
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘John Millington Synge agus athbheocan na Gaeilge’, in Scríobh 4 (1979) pp.221-23.
  • George Watson, ‘J. M. Synge, The Watcher and the Shadows’, in Irish Identity and the Literary Revival (London: Croom Helm 1979), pp.35-86.

1980-
  • Anthony Roche, ‘The Two Worlds of Synge’s The Well of Saints’, in The Genres of Irish Literary Revival , ed. Ronald Schleifer (Oklahoma: Pilgrim; Dublin: Wolfhound 1980), pp.27-38.
  • Alan Warner, ‘John Millington Synge’ [chap.], in A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981), pp.182-208.
  • T. O’Brien Johnson, Synge: The Medieval and the Grotesque (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1982).
  • Nicholas Grene & Ann Saddlemyer, ‘Stephen MacKenna on Synge: A Lost Memoir,’ in Irish University Review (Autumn 1982) [q.p.].
  • Eugene Benson J. M. Synge (Dublin: Macmillan 1982), xii, 167pp., ill. [8pp. pls.].
  • Ann Saddlemyer, ‘James Joyce and the Irish Dramatic Movement’, in James Joyce: A Joyce International Perspective, ed. Suheil Bushrui & Benstock (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1982), pp.190-212.
  • Mark Patrick Hederman, ‘The Playboy versus the Western World, Synge’s political role as artist ‘, in Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies (1982), pp.59-65.
  • D. E. S. Maxwell ‘W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge,’ Modern Irish Drama [Chap. 3] (OUP 1984), pp.33-59.
  • Seamus Deane, ‘Synge and Heroism’, in Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, 1880-1980 (London: Faber & Faber 1985), pp.51-62.
  • Nicholas Grene, Synge: A Critical Study (Basinstoke: Macmillan 1975), and Do. [rep. with alterations] (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1985), 202pp.
  • Anthony Cronin, ‘John Millington Synge: Apart from Anthropology’, Heritage Now: Irish Literature in the English Language (Dingle: Brandon 1982), pp.95-104.
  • Maxwell, ‘J. M. Synge and Samuel Beckett’, in Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley, eds., Across the Roaring Hill, The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff 1985), pp.25-38.
  • James Carney, The Playboy and the Yellow Lady (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1986).
  • Harold Bloom, ed. & intro., The Playboy of the Western World [Modern Critical Interpretations] (NY: Chelsea House Publ. 1988), 134pp. [see contents].
  • [...]
 
1990-
  • Robin Skelton, Celtic Contraries (Syracuse UP 1990), espec. Chaps 1, 2 & 3.
  • Maria Filomena Pereira Rodriguez Louro, “The Drama of J. M. Synge: A Challenge to the Ideology of Myths of Irishness” (PhD Diss., Univ. of Warwick 1991) [Synge as ‘coloniser who refuses’ [after Fanon].
  • Daniel J. Casey, ed., Critical Essays on John Millington Synge (NY: G.K. Hall [1994]), ix, 188pp. [infra].
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘J. M. Synge - Remembering the Future’, in Inventing Ireland: the Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape 1995), pp.167-88.
  • Deborah Fleming, The Man Who does not Exist: The Peasant in the Work of W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge (Michigan UP 1995).
  • Joseph Devlin ‘The Source of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World,’, in Notes on Modern Irish Literature, 7, 2 (Fall 1995), pp.5-9.
  • Alexander G. Gonzalez, Assessment of the Achievement of J. M. Synge (Conn: Greenwood Press 1996), 250pp.
  • René Agostini, ‘J. M. Synge’s Celestial Peasants’, in Rural Ireland, Real Ireland, ed. Jacqueline Genet (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996) [c.p.163.]
  • Anthony R. Hale, ‘Framing the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston, John Millington Synge, and the Politics of Aesthetic Ethnography’, in The Comparatist, ‘Postcolonial Theory and Irish Literature’ [Special Issue, guest ed., Michael R. Molino], Vol. XX [Virginia Commonwealth Univ.] (May 1996), pp.50-61.
  • Luke Gibbons, ‘Synge, Country and Western: The Myth of the West in Irish and American Culture’ in Transformations in Irish Culture (Field Day/Cork UP 1996), pp.23-35.
  • Ronán MacDonald, ‘A Gallous Story or a Dirty Deed?: J. M. Synge and the Art of Guilt’, in Irish Studies Review, 17 (Winter 1996/97), pp.25-30 [reprint in Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett (London: Palgrave 2002)].
  • Joseph Devlin, ‘J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and the Culture of Western Ireland under Late Colonial Rule’, in Modern Drama, 41 (1998), pp.371-84.
  • Chiaki Kojima, ‘J. M. Synge and Nationalism: Concerning The Playboy of the Western World’, in The Harp, 13, (1998), pp.50-60 [available at JSTOR - online].
2000-
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘Synge’s Tristes Tropiques: The Aran Islands’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.420-39.
  • Mary C. King, ‘Conjuring Past or Future? Versions of Synge’s “Play of ’98”’, in The Irish Review, 26, 1 (Autumn 2000), pp.71-79.
  • David Edgar, ‘What’s Coming’, review of W. J. McCormack, Fool of the Family: A Life of J. M. Synge, in London Review of Books (22 March 2001, pp.34-35) [see extract]
  • Rob Doggett, ‘In the Shadow of the Glen: Gender, Nationalism, and “A Woman Only”’, in ELH [English Literary History] 67, 4 (Winter 2000), pp.1011-34 [available at JSTOR - online; see summary.]
  • Gregory Castle, Modernism and the Celtic Revival (Cambridge UP 2001) [Chap. 3, ‘“Synge-on-Aran”: The Aran Islands and the Subject of Revivalist Ethnography’, & Chap. 4, ‘Staging Ethnography’].
  • Christopher Morash, ‘A Night at the Theatre 4: The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea [...] Abbey Theatre, Tuesday 29 January 1907’ [chap. in], A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000 (Cambridge UP 2002), pp.130-38.
  • Ronan McDonald, Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett (London: Palgrave 2002), 214pp. [Chap. 2: ‘A Gallous Story or a Dirty Deed: J. M. Synge and the Tragedy of Evasion’, pp.42-84].
  • Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Synge and Irish Nationalism: The Precursor to Revolution (Westport, NJ: Greenwood Press 2002), xvi, 113pp.
  • Paul Murphy, ‘J. M. Synge and the Pitfalls of National Consciousness’, in Theatre Research International, 28 [Cambridge Online Journals] (28 July 2003) [available at TRI - online].
  • P. J. Matthews, Revival: The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League and the Co-operative Movement (Cork UP 2003), 280pp. [whole chap. on Shadw of the Glen.].
  • Mary C. King, ‘J. M. Synge, “National” Drama and the post-Protestant Imagination’, in The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-century Irish Drama, ed. Shaun Richards (Cambridge UP 2003) [Chap. 6].
  • Nelson Ó Ceallaigh Ritschel, ‘In the Shadow of the Glen: Synge, Ostrovsky, and Marital Separation’, in New Hibernia Review, 7, 4 (Winter 2004), pp.85-102 [available at JSTOR - online; see extract].
  • James Pethica, ‘“A Young Man’s Ghost”: Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge’, in Irish University Review, 34, 1, Spring/Summer 2004), pp.1-20 [see extract].
  • Adrian Frazier, Playboys of the Western World: Production Histories (Carysfort Press (Dublin: Carysfort Press 2004), xiv, 182pp.
  • Ben Levitas, ‘Mirror up to Nurture: J. M. Synge and His Critics’, in Modern Drama, 47, 4 [Special Irish Issue, ed. Karen Fricker & Brian Singleton] (Winter 2004), pp.542-84.
  • Colm Tóibín, ed., Synge: A Celebration (Carysfort Press 2005), 179pp. [contribs. incl. Sebastian Barry, Marina Carr, Anthony Cronin, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Joseph O’Connor, Mary O’Malley, Fintan O’Toole, Vincent Woods; available at Google Books - online; see also review].
  • George Cusack, ‘“In the gripe of the ditch”: Nationalism, famine and The Playboy of the Western World’, in Hungry Words. Images of Famine in the Irish Canon, ed., Cusack & Sarah Gross (Dublin: IAP 2006), pp.133-58.
  • Andrea Mayr, The Aran Islands and Anglo-Irish Literature: a Literary History and Selected Studies, with a preface by Otto Rauchbauer (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2008) [sect. on Synge].
  • Mary Burke, “Tinkers”: Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller (Oxford: OUP 2009), 344pp. [launched at Synge Summer School, June 2009].
  • George Cusack, The Politics of Identity in Irish Drama: W.B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory and J. M. Synge (London: Routledge 2009), 210pp.
  • Barry Monahan, Ireland’s Theatre on Film: Style, Stories and the National Stage on Screen (Dublin; IAP 2009), viii, 279pp., ill. [chap: ‘John Millington Synge and Ireland / Brian Desmond Hurst’].
2010-
  • Nicholas Grene, ‘J. M. Synge’, in W. B. Yeats in Context, ed. David Holdeman & Ben Levitas (Cambridge UP 2010) [Chap. 13].
  • Colm Tóibín, ‘New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Synge and His Family’, in New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families (London: Viking [Penguin] 2012), pp.78-110.
  • Alex Davis,‘. M. Synge’s Vita Vecchia and Aucassin et Nicolette’, in Notes and Queries, 58, 1 (Oxford 2011), pp.125-27.
  • Alan Titley, ‘The Irish Language and Synge’, in Nailing Theses: Selected Essays (Belfast: Lagan Press 2011), pp.130-44 [see extract].
  • Patrick Lonergan, ed., Synge and his Influences: Centenary Essays from the Synge Summer School (Dublin: Carysfort Press 2011), xvii, 309pp. [see contents].
  • [...]
  • Colm Tóibín, ‘The mystery of Inis Meáin’, in The Guardian ([Sat] 12 May 2007) [see full-text version].
  • [...]
  • Christopher Collins, Theatre and Residual Culture: J. M. Synge and Pre-Christian Ireland (London: Palgrave 2016), 300pp.
 

See also Nicholas Grene, ‘Reality Check: Authenticity from Synge to McDonagh’, Lecture at Univ. of N. Carolina, English Department (2 Dec. 2004), printed in Munira H. Mutran & Laura P. Z. Izarra, eds., Irish Studies in Brazil, Sao Paolo Univ.: Associação Editorial Humanitas 2005), pp.69-88, espec. pp.71ff.

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General reading
  • Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years: Recollections of Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh: As told to Edward Kenny (Dublin: James Duffy 1955).
  • Lady Augusta Gregory, Our Irish Theatre. Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1972.
  • Hogan, Robert & James Kilroy, The Abbey Theatre: The Years of Synge, 1905-1909 (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1978) [Vol. 3 in The Modern Irish Drama: A Documentary History (Dolmen 1975-78), 3 vols.]
  • Morash, Christopher. A History of Irish Theatre: 1601-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Fitz-Simon, Christopher. The Abbey Theatre: Ireland’s National Theatre, The First 100 Years ( London: Thames & Hudson 2003).
  • Irish Theatre on Tour, ed. Nicholas Grene & Chris Morash (Dublin: Carysfort Press 2005), [incls. John P. Harrington, ‘The Abbey in America: The Real Thing’, pp.35-50].


Bibliographical details
My Uncle John: Edward Stephens’s Life of J. M. Synge, ed. Andrew Carpenter (Oxford: OUP 1974), xviii, 222pp, ill. [8pp. of plates, ports.; lf of pl.]. Foreword by Lilo M. Stephens; Introduction & Acknowledgements; The Synge Family; My Uncle John; Pt. I: 1871-1892; Pt II: 1893-1900; III: 1901-1909

Includes back-paper notice of Collected Works, ed. Robin Skelton, et al. Letters to Molly [Maire O’Neill], ed. Ann Saddlemyer; My Wallet of Photographs, Collected Photographs of J. M. Synge, arranged and introduced by Lilo Stephen (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1971); J. M. Synge Centenary Papers, ed. Maurice Harmon (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1971). Crayon Port. by James Paterson.

E. H. Mikhail, ed., J. M. Synge: Interviews and Recollections (NY: Barnes & Noble; Basingstoke: Macmillan 1977), 138pp. [incls. pieces by Yeats, C. H. H[oughton; i.e., Cherrie Mathieson]; E.R.R. Dodds; Arthur Lynch; Stephen MacKenna; W. B. Yeats; D. J. O’Donoghue; James Joyce [‘An excitable man’]; Maire Ni Shuibhlaigh; William G. Fay; Jack Yeats; Oliver St. John Gogarty; Walter Starkie; Padraic Colum; Joseph Holloway; Sean O’Mahony Rahilly; John Masefield; Lady Gregory; James Stephens; W. R. Rodgers.

Mary C. King, The Drama of J. M. Synge (Syracuse UP 1985), 229pp. [1. Origins are Emblematic as the Results Themselves; 2. Synge and The Aran Islands: A Dramatic Apprenticeship; 3. Riders to the Seas: A Journal Beyond the Literal; 4. Towards the Antithetical Vision: Syntaz and Imagery in In the Shadow of the Glen; 5. The Play of Life: The Tinker’s Wedding Revisited; 6. Word and Vision: Language as Symbolic Action in The Well of the Saints; 7. Metadrama in The Playboy of the Western World; 8. Text and Context in When the Moon has Set; Myth and History: Deirdre of the Sorrows; Not Marble nor the Gilded Monument: Sygne Reassessment. [See extract.]

Harold Bloom, ed. & intro., The Playboy of the Western World [Modern Critical Interpretations] (NY: Chelsea House Publ. 1988), pp.[134]- Editor’s Note [vii]; Introduction [1]; Patrick Meyer Spacks, ‘The Making of the Playboy’ [7]; Alan Price, ‘The Dramatic Imagination: The Playboy’ [19]; Donna Gerstenberger, ‘A Hard Birth’ [39]; Robin Skelton, ‘Character and Symbol’ [57]; Nicholas Grene, ‘Approaches to The Playboy’ [75]; Bruce M. Bigley, ‘The Playboy as Antidrama’ [89]; Edward Hirsch, ‘The Gallous Story and the Dirty Deed: The Two Playboys’ [101]; Hugh Kenner, ‘The Living World for Text: The Playboy’ [117]; Chronology [131]; Contributors [133].

Daniel J. Casey, ed., ed., Critical Essays on John Millington Synge (NY: G.K. Hall [1994];), ix, 188pp. Contents: Casey, ‘J. M. Synge: a reappraisal’; David H. Greene, ‘Synge’s poetic use of language’; Seamus Deane, ‘Synge’s prose writings: a first view of the whole’; Alan Price, ‘The poems’; Robin Skelton, ‘Text and context in When the Moon has Set’; Mary C. King, ‘Yeats and Synge: ‘A young man’s ghost’’; Donna Gerstenberger, ‘Synge’s The Shadow of the Glen: repetition and allusion’; Nicholas Grene, ‘An Aran requiem: setting in Riders to the sea’; Daniel J. Casey ‘The two worlds of Synge’s The Well of the Saints’; Anthony Roche, ‘Myth and journey in The Well of the Saints’; Kate Powers, ‘The playboy as poet’; James F. Kilroy, ‘A carnival Christy and a playboy for all ages’; George Brethertonm, ‘Synge’s ideas of life and art: design and theory in The Playboy of the Western World’; William Hart, ‘“Too immoral for Dublin”: Synge’s The Tinker’s Wedding’; Denis Donoghue, ‘The Tinker’s Wedding’; Weldon Thornton, ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows: literature first [ ..] drama afterwards’; Ann Saddlemyer, ‘The realism of J. M. Synge’; Ronald Gaskell. ‘Ireland In literature’.

Weldon Thornton, Synge and the Western Mind (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979), 169pp.; Acknowledgements [9]; Introduction [11]; I: Seed Time of the Soul [15]; II: The Verge of the Western World [50]; III: Shock of Some Inconceivable Idea [72]; IV: First Fruits, The Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea, The Tinker’s Wedding [97]; Dreamer’s Vexation or Poet’s Balm?: The Well of the Saints, and The Playboy of the Western World [127]; VI: A Sense that fits him to perceive objects unseen before: Deirdre of the Sorrows [144]; Conclusion, Bibliography. [158]; Index. See Bibliography in RICORSOLibrary, “Bibliography - Scholars”, infra.

Nicholas Grene, ed., Interpreting Synge: Essays from the Synge Summer School, 1991-2000 (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2000), 220pp. CONTENTS: Seamus Heaney, “Glanmore Eclogue”; Grene, ‘On the Margins: Synge and Wicklow’; R. F. Foster, ‘Good Behaviour: Yeats, Synge and Anglo-Irish Etiquette’; Frank McGuinness, ‘John Millington Synge and the King of Norway’; Angela Bourke, ‘Keening as theatre: J.M. Synge and the Irish Lament Tradition’ [c.69]; J. M. Synge, “On an island”; Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, “Ar Oileán”; Declan Kiberd, ‘Synge’s tristes tropiques: The Aran Islands’; Tom Paulin, ‘Riders to the Sea: a Revisionist Tragedy?’; Antoinette Quinn, ‘Staging the Irish Peasant Woman: Maud Gonne versus Synge’; Christopher Morash, ‘All Playboys Now: the Audience and the Riot’; Martin Hilsky, ‘Re-imagining Synge’s Language: the Czech Experience’; Gerald Dawe, “Distraction”; Anthony Roche, ‘J. M. Synge and Molly Allgood: The Woman and the Tramp’; Ann Saddlemyer, ‘Synge’s soundscape’; Brendan Kennelly, “Synge”.

Brian Cliff & Nicholas Grene, eds., Synge and Edwardian Ireland (OUP 2011), 288pp. [see contents] Illustrations; Foreword; Introduction. PART I - EDWARDIAN IRELAND: 1. The Edwardian Condition of Ireland; 2. Synge’s Typewriter: the Technological Sublime in Edwardian Ireland; 3. Stalking Yeats: the Celebrity System of Revivalist Dublin; 4. Synge and Edwardian Theatre; 5. Preserving the Relics of Heroic Time: Visualizing the Celtic Revival in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland]; 6. Synge, Music and Edwardian Dublin; 7. Political Animals: Somerville and Ross and Percy French on Edwardian Ireland. PART II - SYNGE: CONTEXTS AND COMPARISONS: 8. Synge and Modernity in The Aran Islands; 9. Synge, Reading, and Archipelago; 10. Travelling Home: J.M. Synge and the Politics of Place; 11. With his ‘Mind-guided Camera’: J. M. Synge, J. J. Clarke and the Visual Politics of Edwardian Street Photography; 12. The price of kelp in Connemara: Synge, Pearse, and the idealisation of folk culture; 13. Ghostly Intertexts: James Joyce and the Legacy of Synge. Bibliography. [Digital edition (2012) - available online; accessed 20.09.2021.]

Patrick Lonergan, ed., Synge and his Influences: Centenary Essays from the Synge Summer School (Dublin: Carysfort Press 2011), xvii, 309pp. [Contributors include Ann Saddlemyer, Ben Levitas, Mary Burke, Paige Reynolds, Eil´s Ní Dhuibhne, Mark Phelan, Shaun Richards, Ondrej Pilny, Richard Pine, Alexandra Poulain, Emilie Pine, Melissa Sihra, Sara Keating, Bisi Adigun, Adrian Frazier and Anthony Roche - treating of considers Synge’s place in Ireland today, espec. how The Playboy of the Western World as an agent of globalisation and multi-culturalism in productions by the Abbey Theatre, Druid Theatre, and Pan Pan Theatre Company; also treats of Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Marina Carr, as well as Mustapha Matura, Erisa Kironde, et al.]

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