Churchill’s Socialism: Political Resistance in the Plays of Caryl Churchill
Author: Siân Adiseshiah
Date Of Publication: Oct 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1318-1
Isbn: 1-4438-1318-4
Although now celebrated as a world-leading playwright, Caryl Churchill has received little attention for her socialism, which has been frequently overlooked in favour of emphasising gendered identities and postmodernist themes. Churchill’s Socialism examines eight of Churchill’s plays with reference to socialist theories and political movements. This well-researched and dynamic new book reframes Churchill’s work, positioning her plays within socialist discourses, and producing persuasive political readings of her drama that reflect much more of the political challenge that the plays pose. It additionally explores her uneasy relationship with postmodernism, which presents itself particularly in Churchill’s later plays.

The book contains a very helpful chapter on socialist contexts, which outlines some of the key events, debates, and movements during the late 1960s up until the early 2000s. This chapter also offers an incisive critique of the easy acceptance by some socialists of a postmodernist rejection of grand narratives and political agency. An in depth examination of the rarely explored interconnections of utopianism and theatre, forms another chapter, where all eight of Churchill’s plays, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Vinegar Tom, Top Girls, Fen, Serious Money, Mad Forest, The Skriker, and Far Away, are introduced. The plays are then discussed in pairs in a further four chapters with reference to communist historiography, the class/gender intersection, the end-of-history thesis, ecocritical challenges and postmodernism.

Siân Adiseshiah is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln. Her research interests are in contemporary political drama, utopian studies, and gender theory, and she has published book chapters and journal articles in these fields.

“By persuasively locating Churchill’s drama within the concerns of the British Left as they evolved from the optimistic 1960s to the fragmented present, Sian Adiseshiah uncovers the plays’ political bedrock, which has been unfortunately obscured by successive waves of critical fashion. The result is a compelling reassessment of one of the world’s leading playwrights in light of the political tradition she herself explicitly embraces. It is also an illuminating—if sobering—account of the fate of political theatre after the demise of collectivist politics. This book performs an essential correction and expansion of our understanding of Churchill’s ambitious and principled drama.”

—Una Chaudhuri, Collegiate Professor, Professor of English and Drama, New York University

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)