Louro, Maria Filomena Pereira Rodrigues (1991) The Drama of J.M. Synge : a challenge to the ideology and myths of Irishness. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Opinions about Synge's work vary from redundant noise to van-guardist art, or the embodiment of the spirit of the Nation. The literary mask created by Yeats and the disparaging caricature his opponents publicised, have barred access to the unbiased study of his work documents. Synge's plays changed the course of the emerging National Theatre. Yeats's plays were attacked for not serving well enough the nationalist cause, but Synge's were seen by nationalists as working completely on the other side of the fence. This argument and the poetical fallacy of Synge's political inactivity are here reappraised.

For the nationalists both his witting silence and his social and family background caused aggravation which found opportunity to be voiced at each production of his plays. What still disturbs in the plays is the interaction between individuals and social groups. The exchanges between characters, the progress or stasis of individual characters through the play, the continual change of perspective forced on the audience, these are the features that still strike a controversial note today.

Synge is here seen as a "colonizer who refuses" as he frees himself from family strict rule. The first two chapters analyse the historical and personal evolution towards a native Irish Theatre in English. The following chapters study the process by which each play diverts the expectations it arouses in the audience, following the genesis of each play through its source material when possible, to see how some controversial images and dialogues were arrived at, where they acquired their polemic weight.

This part of the study focuses on the writing methods of Synge, and the "reading formation” of the public. The grotesque style of the plays and prose is found to be similar in tone to the Rabelaisian grotesque: both share the hope of regeneration in life's forces and nature, as opposed to a strict Christianity. Synge's use of grotesque shattered aesthetic and philosophical expectations in his intellectual audience, causing the anger among the nationalists and the literary coterie. The particular depiction of women's roles in his plays are compared with Victorian and modern patterns of female behaviour.

In the plays Nature is seen not as the bucolic "locus" for philosophical self-contemplation, but as nurturer and threat for its original dwellers. The knowledge of and closeness to the forces of Nature elicit respect for outsiders as possessing a valuable culture, either in isolation or organised in marginal societies. The outcasts in Irish society are given an articulate voice in Synge's plays: beggars, vagrants, tinkers, the blind and women. In all plays strong female characters assert themselves in unorthodox ways, defying custom and legend. The use of legend in his last play shows Synge as heralding the end of a mythologising era, presenting legendary events issuing not from fate but personal heroic decision, that of a woman who choses her life and death, following her own values.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Synge, J. M. (John Millington), 1871-1909, English drama -- Irish authors, Nationalism and literature -- Ireland, Theater -- Ireland
Official Date:	September 1991
Dates:	Date Event September 1991 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Theatre Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Barker, Clive, 1931-
Sponsors:	Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	viii, 350 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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