Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-309). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1999. / Bibliography: p. 90-98.

This thesis will examine the direct and indirect impact the Irish National theatre had upon American theatre in general and the African American theatre in particular. It discusses the relationship between the Irish theatrical movement during the Irish Literary Renaissance and the drama that was produced during the Harlem Renaissance. To do this Rorty’s concepts of the ‘strong poet’ and ‘ironist’ will be utilized. The bleeding and cross contamination of culture, it is contended, was due to the American tour that the Irish Players undertook in 1911/12. The tour, although staged in white theatre houses and attended by a mainly white audience, had a sizeable impact on the American theatrical landscape. This thesis will chart the course of this change, from the tour through to the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance. From the Abbey Theatre to the Little Theatre movement and from there to the African American theatre a continuous thread of de-reification, of cultural awakenings is established. In essence, the source of the African American theatre, both the Artistic stylings and hopes of Alain Locke and the propaganda aspirations of W.E.B. DuBois will be referred back to the Irish tour.

The Celts, as a distinct and culturally-unified people, are a social construction as much as an historical reality, endowing Celtic antiquity with a certain availability of outline, and a certain scope. When the Celtic world began to be scrutinised in the eighteenth century, its borders could, therefore, be filled with concepts drawn from other antiquities. Classical antiquity, and particularly its Greek variety, was a vital coordinate in this navigation of the past. This thesis explores the history of these Graeco-Celtic negotiations. Using Reinhart Koselleck's theory of asymmetric counterconcepts, it calculates the precise angles of the relation between Greek and Celt in antiquarianism, comparative mythology and folklore, Classics and Celtic Studies, from the early eighteenth and to the late nineteenth centuries. The thesis then puts forward one particular writer as an original and unique interpreter of the tradition of Graeco-Celtic relations, the Irish playwright J.M. Synge. Through archival research, it demonstrates quite how deeply Synge was immersed in this scholarly tradition; in the last years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, he followed a deliberate path of reading in antiquarianism, Classics, Celtic Studies, comparative linguistics, mythology and folklore. It then argues that Synge transformed such Graeco-Celtic scholarship into a formidable authorial strategy, in his prose account of his travels on the Aran Islands and his famous, controversial plays. By identifying this strategy, it reveals how Synge's work exploits the continued presence and power of antiquity. Most studies of the reception of Greek antiquity in Irish literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries assume a straightforward, inherent connection between Ireland and Greece. This thesis complicates that connection by identifying the powerful history of Graeco-Celtic relations and, particularly, its transformation at the hands of J.M. Synge. This will allow for scrutiny of what actually happens at the crux between Greece and Ireland in literary texts.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Ireland's identity was continually pulled between its loyalties to Catholicism and British imperialism. In response to this conflict of identity, W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory argued the need for an Irish theatre that was demonstrative of the Irish people, returning to the literary traditions to the Celtic heritage. What resulted was a questioning of religion and politics in Ireland, specifically the Catholic Church and its priests. Yeat's own drama removed the priests from the stage and replaced them with characters demonstrative of those literary traditions, establishing what he called a "new priesthood". In response to this removal, Yeat's contemporaries such as J. M. Synge and Bernard Shaw evolved his vision, creating a criticism and, ultimately, a rejection of Irish priests. In doing so, these playwrights created depictions of absent, ineffectual, and pagan priests that have endured throughout the twentieth century.

Synge's plays contain some of the most arresting figures in modern drama, his characterization second only to his unique language, the most striking feature of his writing. Of the men, only Christy Mahon and Martin Doul stand out but the women form a brilliant company usually overshadowing the other characters. Chapter 1, p. 1.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:29:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2012-02-28Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T21:00:13Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 tokita_jf_me_sjrp.pdf: 1102521 bytes, checksum: 04547ae0d04a2a0520c86b16cea07dec (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O resgate da antiga tradição literária irlandesa é um contínuo processo de ressignificação e manutenção de todo arcabouço que representa a própria identidade do país. As personagens mitológicas estão presentes na memória da população e servem como inspiração para novas leituras e adaptações. O trabalho de releituras mitológicas intensificou- se principalmente durante o movimento do revivalismo celta (Celtic Revival, início do século XX), tendo como principal figura o dramaturgo William Butler Yeats. Inspirado pelo espírito nacionalista de dado movimento, John Millington Synge produziu diversas peças voltadas para a temática da vida e história celta, entre elas está Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910). Quase um século mais tarde, Vincent Woods escreveu A Cry from Heaven (2005), peça que também tem por base o mito The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, vulgarmente conhecido como o mito de Deirdre. Esta dissertação analisa uma particularidade acerca da mitologia irlandesa, ou seja, o fato de esta tradição nos presentear com uma vasta quantidade de importantes personagens femininas. O mito de Deirdre, que originalmente leva o nome dos guerreiros, e filhos de Uisliu (The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu), possui como principal personagem uma mulher, Deirdre. Esta característica foi mantida e revisada por Synge e Woods. Neste sentido, averiguamos aspectos acerca da caracterização das personagens femininas presentes em cada uma das peças, de modo comparativo com as presentes no mito. Para tanto, utilizamos a tradução de Thomas Kinsella, presente na obra The Táin (1969), The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu. As ações e os discursos das personagens foram examinados. Deste modo, utilizamos a hipótese de que as personagens femininas nas peças de Synge e Woods poderiam (ou não) ser caracterizadas como mulheres mais independentes... / The work of deliverance from the ancient Irish literary tradition is a continuous process of re-signification and maintenance of all the collection of stories that represent the country´s own identity. The mythical characters are present in the people´s memories and are a source of inspiration for new readings and new adaptations. The work of mythological rereading became intense mainly during the Celtic Revival Movement, having as leading role the playwright William Butler Yeats. Inspired by the nationalist spirit from this period, John Millington Synge produced several plays regarding the celtic life and history, among them is Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910). Almost a century after Vincent Woods wrote A Cry from Heaven (2005), a play that is also shaped having the myth The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, widely known as the myth of Deirdre, as source. This dissertation aimed to analyze one specificity regarding the Irish mythology, in other words, the fact that this traditions presents us with a wide amount of important female characters. The myth of Deirdre, that originally has the name of its warriors, and sons of Uisliu, has as the main character a woman, Deirdre. This feature was maintained and revised in a special manner by Synge and Woods. Thus, our goal was to research aspects of the female characterization present in each play, in a comparative manner with the same ones present in the myth. For such, Thomas Kinsella´s translation, present in The Táin (1969), The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu was used. The female actions and speeches were examined, especially in dialogues with the male figure. Therefore, we worked with the hypothesis that the female characters in Vincent Woods´s and Synge´s plays could (or couldn´t) have been characterized as independent and powerful women, if compared with their traditional... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

This thesis is concerned with one key aspect of the reception of the vernacular poetry of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), namely translations and imitations of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Rvf) and Triumphi in English. It aims to provide a more comprehensive survey of the vernacular Petrarch’s legacy to English literature than is currently available, with a particular focus on some hitherto critically neglected texts and authors. It also seeks to ascertain to what degree the socio-historical phenomena of religion, politics, and culture have influenced the translations and imitations in question. The approach has been both chronological and comparative. This strategy will demonstrate with greater clarity the monumental effect of the Elizabethan Reformation on the English reception of Petrarch. It proposes a solution to the problem of the long gap between Geoffrey Chaucer’s re-writing of Rvf 132 and the imitations of Wyatt and Surrey framed in the context of Chaucer’s sophisticated imitative strategy (Chapter I). A fresh reading of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella is offered which highlights the author’s misgivings about the dangers of textual misinterpretation, a concern he shared with Petrarch (Chapter II). The analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion in the same chapter reveals a hitherto undetected Ovidian subtext to Petrarch’s Rvf 190. Chapter III deals with two English versions of the Triumphi: I propose a date for Lord Morley’s translation which suggests it may be the first post- Chaucerian English engagement with Petrarch; new evidence is brought to light which identifies the edition of Petrarch used by William Fowler as the source text for his Triumphs of Petrarcke. The fourth chapter constitutes the most extensive investigation to date of J. M. Synge’s engagement with the Rvf, and deals with the question of translation as subversion. On the theoretical front, it demonstrates how Synge’s use of “folk-speech” challenges Venuti’s binary foreignising/domesticating system of translation categorisation.