Page "Field Day Theatre Company" Paragraph 21

In 1990 Field Day Published the three volume Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, edited by Seamus Deane.

The project, according to Deane, was nothing less than an " act of definition ", one which he hoped would be inclusive and representative of the plurality of Irish identity: " There is a story here, a meta-narrative, which is, we believe, hospitable to all the micro-narratives that, from time to time, have achieved prominence as the official version of the true history, political and literary, of the island's past and present ".

The Anthology was immediately attacked by Field Day's critics as politically biased.

The anthology's most conspicuous flaw, however, was the paucity of women writers.

In response to the accusations that Field Day had elided the female voice, the directors, all men, commissioned a fourth volume to be edited by women and dedicated to women's writing.

But for the critics of Field Day, and even to some of their supporters, a separate volume, issued as an afterthought, became emblematic of the marginalization of women within nationalist and cultural discourse.