Resumen de “if art has a kind of function at all, it is to help us to understand what we are doing here”: An interview with Marina Carr

Pilar Villar Argáiz, Marta Alfonso Caballero

• This interview was conducted on occasion of Marina Carr’s visit to the University of Granada in February 2018, as guest writer to the III International Seminar of Irish Studies. Her visit was funded through the Irish Itinerary Programme offered by EFACIS (European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies). The conversation – conducted by Pilar Villar-Argáiz and Marta Alfonso Caballero – followed Carr’s public reading of two of her most recognized plays: By the Bog of Cats (1998) and Woman and Scarecrow (2006). In this interview, Carr talks about these two plays in relation to relevant topics, ranging from her rewriting of Greek mythology and the impact of religion in contemporary Ireland, to the relationship between feminism and literature, her portrayal of passionate women, and the influence that literary predecessors have exerted in her work.