Professor Irene Morra
Professor
- morrai@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 5662
- 2.20, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
I am currently Visiting Professor in English Literature at the University of Toronto.
Current book projects:
- Through a Fog Darkly: Britain Noir
- Britain, Canada, and the Arts: Cultural Exchange as Postwar Renewal
Books:
- Verse Drama in England, 1900-2015: Art, Modernity, and the National Stage (Bloomsbury Methuen, 2016)
- The New Elizabethan Age: Culture, Society, and National Identity after World War II, ed. with Rob Gossedge (I.B. Tauris, 2016)
- Britishness, Popular Music and National Identity: The Making of Modern Britain (Routledge, 2014)
- Twentieth-Century British Authors and the Rise of Opera in Britain (Ashgate, 2007)
Please click on 'Publications' profile for a list of peer-reviewed articles and essays.
Primary research and teaching/supervisory interests :
- drama (including music-drama), especially early modern, Victorian, and modern/contemporary
- literature and music:
- intermediality and aesthetics
- ideas of musicality in prose, fiction, and drama
- opera studies
- popular music and music culture
- film and television studies (adaptation, film musical, dramatists writing for film)
- cultural afterlives, especially Renaissance and medieval
- Victorian intertextuality and cultural exchange
- the modern and contemporary novel, especially American and British
- twentieth-century English political and social history
- English cultural nationalism and class politics in art
- British and Canadian artistic and cultural exchange
Biography
Education and Qualifications
- B.A. (English Literature, Musicology, and French Literature, University of Toronto)
- M.A. (Queen's University)
- PhD (University of Toronto)
Professional memberships
British Shakespeare Association (BSA)
British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS)
Modern Language Association of America (MLA)
Modernist Studies Association (MSA)
North American Conference for British Studies (NACBS)
Shakespeare Association of America (SAA)
Publications
2022
- Morra, I. 2022. 'Tendernesses of an England Long Past' Opera, Elegy, and the Music of Alan Hollinghurst. In: Durkin, R. et al. eds. The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature. Routledge, pp. 177-190.
- Morra, I. 2022. English and British national identity in the Arts. In: Stroeher, V. P. and Vickers, J. eds. Benjamin Britten in Context. Composers in Context Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 303-310., (10.1017/9781108634878.035)
2021
- Morra, I. 2021. Music. In: Kornhaber, D. and Loehlin, J. N. eds. Tom Stoppard in Context. Literature in Context Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 147-154., (10.1017/9781108303736.023)
2020
- Morra, I. 2020. Battering rams at the Bastille: Rewriting "the Drama of the New" in Gordon Bottomley's Gruach. Modern Drama 63(1) (10.3138/md.1068r)
2016
- Morra, I. 2016. Gloriana and the new Elizabethan Age. In: Begam, R. and Smith, M. W. eds. Modernism and Opera. Hopkins Studies in Modernism Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 290-314.
- Morra, I. and Gossedge, R. eds. 2016. The New Elizabethan Age: culture, society and national identity after WWII. London: I.B. Tauris.
- Morra, I. 2016. Verse drama in England, 1900-2015: Art, modernity, and the national stage. Critical Companions. London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen.
- Morra, I. 2016. New Elizabethanism: origins and legacies. In: Morra, I. and Gossedge, R. A. eds. The New Elizabethan Age: Culture, Society and National Identity after WWII. I.B. Tauris, pp. 17-48.
- Morra, I. 2016. History play: people, pageant, and the New Shakespearean Age. In: Morra, I. and Gossedge, R. A. eds. The New Elizabethan Age: Culture, Society and National Identity after WWII. I.B. Tauris, pp. 308-336.
- Morra, I. and Gossedge, R. A. 2016. Introduction. In: Morra, I. and Gossedge, R. A. eds. The New Elizabethan Age: Culture, Society and National Identity after WWII. I.B. Tauris, pp. 1-13.
2015
- Morra, I. 2015. The spectre on the stair: intertextual chains in 'Great Expectations' and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. Literary Imagination 17(1), pp. 71-94. (10.1093/litimag/imv002)
2014
- Morra, I. 2014. Britishness, popular music, and national identity: The making of modern Britain. Routledge Studies in Popular Music. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Morra, I. 2014. Maenads and Metatheatre: Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer as Euripidean myth. The Tennessee Williams Annual Review 14, pp. 1-25.
2013
- Morra, I. 2013. The habit of art: in the beginning was the word. Modern Drama 56(3), pp. 352-373.
2010
- Morra, I. 2010. Outstaring the Sun: Contemporary Opera and the Literary Librettist. Contemporary Music Review 29(2), pp. 121-135. (10.1080/07494467.2010.534917)
2009
- Morra, I. 2009. Constructing Camelot: Britain and the New World Musical. Contemporary Theatre Review 19(1), pp. 22 -34. (10.1080/10486800802661665)
2007
- Morra, I. 2007. Twentieth-century British authors and the rise of opera in Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate.
- Morra, I. 2007. Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Italian opera. Essays in Criticism 57(3), pp. 217-236. (10.1093/escrit/cgm009)
- Morra, I. 2007. Drama in England, 1940-2002. In: Cody, G. H. and Sprinchorn, E. eds. The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 409-410.
- Morra, I. and Sprinchorn, E. 2007. Ronald Duncan. In: Cody, G. H. ed. The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama., Vol. 1. Columbia University Press, pp. 377-378.
2005
- Morra, I. 2005. Performing the Edwardian ideal: David Mamet and "The Winslow Boy". Modern Drama 48(4), pp. 744-757. (10.1353/mdr.2006.0034)
2004
- Morra, I. 2004. "Singing like a musical box": musical detection and novelistic tradition. In: Losseff, N. and Fuller, S. eds. The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 151-170.
2003
- Morra, I. 2003. The Importance of Being Earnest [Film Review]. Scope: An Online Refereed Journal of Film Studies 2003(May), pp. 35-37.
2002
- Morra, I. 2002. A song not without words: singing "Billy Budd". In: Meyer, M. J. ed. Literature and Musical Adaptation. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 7-27.
2001
- Morra, I. 2001. Mansfield Park [Film Review]. Scope: An Online Refereed Journal of Film Studies 2001(August)
- Morra, I. 2001. Muriel Spark. In: Reichhardt, M. ed. Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Greenwood, pp. 357-361.
- Morra, I. 2001. Dorothy L. Sayers. In: Reichardt, M. ed. Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Greenwood Press, pp. 338-343.
- Morra, I. 2001. Elizabeth Cary. In: Reichardt, M. ed. Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Greenwood, pp. 24-28.
- Morra, I. 2001. Musical biography. In: Jolly, M. ed. Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. Fitzroy Dearborn, pp. 362.
- Morra, I. 2001. Georg Philip Telemann. 18th Century Online Encyclopedia: Enlightenment and Revolution
- Morra, I. 2001. Ludwig van Beethoven. 18th Century Online Encyclopedia: Enlightenment and Revolution
- Morra, I. 2001. Domenico Scarlatti. 18th Century Online Encyclopedia: Enlightenment and Revolution
- Morra, I. 2001. Composers of the Nazi era: eight portraits by Michael H. Kater [Book Review]. University of Toronto Quarterly 71(1), pp. 330-332.
Teaching
I have designed and taught the following modules at Cardiff University:
- Critical Reading and Critical Writing (team-taught module)
- Drama: Page and Stage
- Shakespeare’s Comedies
- John Donne
- The Victorian Novel (with Dr. Becky Munford)
- Social Politics and National Style: American Fiction and Form, 1920-1940
- The American South in Literature and Film
- Literature and the London Blitz
- Modern Drama I
- Modern Drama II
- Modern Drama: Page, Stage, Screen
- The Film Musical
- Music and Nation
- Literature into Film
- Shakespeare and the Victorians
- Modern and Contemporary American Drama (MA)
- Against the Law: Reading and Writing Homosexuality in Post-War England (MA)
I have supervised postgraduate dissertations on Renaissance drama, the Victorian novel, twentieth-century American fiction, 1920s experimental theatre, British interwar and postwar culture, opera, and modern and contemporary drama.
I welcome enquiries about supervision in any of the areas above or in the research areas listed on the 'Overview' and 'Research' pages.
My research is often interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary, and has ranged across literary periods and genres.
I am currently working on two book projects. Through a Fog Darkly: Britain Noir and Britain, Canada, and the Arts: Postwar Renewal and Cultural Exchange.
My publications on Victorian literature have included explorations of the figure of the isolated musician in the Victorian novel; Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and nineteenth-century opera; and the intertextual presence of Shakespeare, Milton, and Tennyson in the novels of Dickens and Twain.
Essays on modern and contemporary culture have analysed music and 'gay aesthetic' in the novels of Alan Hollinghurst; the Edwardian enthusiasms of David Mamet on film; intertextuality in Nella Larsen; the Anglophilia of Lerner and Lowe; the anti-theatricality of the contemporary English stage; and the relationship between artistic expression, social empowerment, and cultural nationalism in the reception of the London Olympics Opening ceremony.
Other essays have explored the New Elizabethan status of Hilary Mantel, the signifying theatricality of Greek drama in the work of Tennessee Williams, the influence of 1930s class politics on the drama of Terence Rattigan, and the dynamic, pervasive resonance of Shakespearean theatre in modern and contemporary politics, pageantry, and drama.
My books have focussed primarily on literature, the arts, and the social and political implications of cultural nationalism in modern and contemporary Britain, from a variety of perspectives and methodologies.
