The friction of the animal and the divine

This article looks at representations of early sexual experience in Neil Jordan’s The Miracle (1991). It contrasts the fantasies and the realities of the parallel sex lives of the film’s teenage protagonists, which are central to the narrative and set within a travelling circus. Both the circus ring and the Catholic Church feature in Jordan’s film as locations in which sexual desires are expressed, and this article considers the associated functions of the actors and icons proper to these spaces as we see them on screen. It thereby forges new critical connections between The Miracle and prose, poetry, and plays written by W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge. The article also makes extensive use of an original and as yet unpublished interview conducted with Neil Jordan in June 2014.