Irish Literary Figures Trivia Quiz

Answer: Brian Friel

Along with Seamus Heaney and Stephen Lea, Friel founded Northern Ireland's 'Field Day' movement. 'Philadelphia, Here I Come' uses the unusual convention of having two actors play the main star. One actor plays the public persona: always handy with a joke and ready to party with friends.

The other plays the private man: unsure of himself and still deciding whether he really wants to go to America. This enables Friel to display the man arguing with himself on stage in scenes which are quite effective dramatically.

Answer: William Butler Yeats

Yeats won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature. Many of his poems deal with the trauma Ireland faced as it first fought a war of independence with England, then fell into civil war.

Answer: Seamus Heaney

This winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature also is well-known for his translation of Beowulf. He grew up in the bog country of Ireland, and those same bogs feature prominently in his poems.

Answer: Joyce

'Ulysses' was named the greatest book in the English Language by the Modern Library, but many readers find it simply incomprehensible. Even harder to understand is 'Finnegan's Wake', whose complexities include, among others, a first line which is the completion of a sentence begun on the last line of the novel.

Answer: John Millington Synge

'Playboy of the Western World' caused riots when it first appeared in Dublin theatres due to its unflattering depiction of the average Irishman. It depicts a man who (in order to better get the girls) claims that he murdered his father. Complications arise when the father arrives on the scene, making the lie rather implausible.

Answer: Sean O'Casey

'Juno and the Paycock' is set during the Irish Civil War and describes a woman's attempts at keeping a crumbling household together. 'The Plough and the Stars' follows the inhabitants of a Dublin tenement in the months leading up to the Easter Rebellion.

It also led to rioting in the theatre, this time because it had the audacity to place a prostitute on the same stage as Patrick Pearse (one of the martyrs of the rebellion).

Answer: Swift

'A Modest Proposal' describes satirically a way of dealing with both the growing Irish population and the problem of hunger: serving Irish babies as meals!

Answer: Seamus Deane

Deane is another Northern Irish founder of the Field Day movement. 'Reading in the Dark' was short-listed for the 1996 Booker Prize (given annually to the best full-length novel written in the British Commonwealth). It is a semi-autobiographical novel telling of a boy growing up in Northern Ireland and seeing history written and rewritten before his eyes.

Answer: Patrick McCabe

The Butcher Boy was made into a movie starring Eamonn Owens. It tells of a Catholic boy in Northern Ireland who gradually descends into violence due to his frustration at the wealth of the neighboring Protestants. It also was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Answer: Wilde

Upon entering U.S. customs, he once quipped 'I have nothing to declare except my genius'. Although many of his plays are light, satirical works, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' is a much darker tale. The title character's face remains forever youthful as he ages, while the portrait shows both his age and the evil he is becoming inside.