“By the Bog of Cats” by Marina Carr: Tragedy of Self-Knowledge

Abstract

After an experimental period strongly influenced by Samuel Beckett, between the late 1980s and the early 1990s Marina Carr emerged with the «Midlands trilogy» The Mai (1994), Portia Coughlan (1996) and By the Bog of Cats (1998) as one of the most potent and talented Irish women dramatists, competing with celebrated male playwrights, such as Frank McGuinness, Brian Friel, Martin McDonagh, Dermot Bolger, Conor McPherson, Sebastian Barry, and Enda Walsh. This essay will shed light on the last play of the trilogy, By the Bog of Cats, tragedy of a «settled Traveller» which Patrick Lonergan has rightly defined as «Carr’s masterpiece».