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Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, or The Justification of Literature
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 35, Number 1, April 2011
- pp. 168-181
- 10.1353/phl.2011.0006
- Article
- Additional Information
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Since 1996, with the premiere of his play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Martin McDonagh has emerged as one of the most powerful young voices in the English-speaking theater world. The Pillowman is his most philosophical work. It is a meta-theatrical exercise that obliquely addresses the question of whether theater (and, by extension, literature) can be justified in anything that it says. Or, instead, are some things out of bounds, perhaps sometimes warranting regulation?