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I.M. Synge's The Playboy ofthe Western World and the Culture of Western Ireland under Late Colonial Rule JOSEPH DEVLIN In the difficult political and cultural environment of nationalist Ireland under British control, John Millington Synge travelled to the west coast and came upon a pre-industrialized, oral culture that was fast disappearing. His decision to chronicle this culture, in his drama and prose, arose from a deep sympathy with and appreciation for the western peasantry and their way of life, and this attitude affected his work in many different ways, most obviously in his unvarying preference for source material from rural Ireland, usually rural western Ireland. Although this predilection appears obvious from the works themselves. and has been commented on since their first perfonnance or publication , one important instance of Synge's use of the maller of the west has remained completely unnoticed. The Playhoy of the Western World, Synge's most important play and one of the most celebrated Irish plays ever written, has its origin in a well-known European folktale then popular in the west, "The Brave Little Tailor.'" The plot of the play, as well as its theme, main characters and tone, all arise directly from this source, and Synge's use of this popular oral art ronn has important implications for his relation to the peasant culture he had come into contact with and made the basis of his art. The west of Ireland was then undergoing severe stress arising from colonial and economic factors, and old ways of life were fast giving way. Thus the adaptation and dramatization of "The Brave Lillie Tailor" into The Playhoy of the Western World is an act not only of cultural homage. but also of preservation. Although many allempts have previously been made to discover and describe parallels between The Playboy of the Western World and various literary works, particularly medieval Irish literary works, the connections have proven tenuous and ultimately unsatisfactory.2 Even Synge's most sustained use of an ancient story or myth, the Christy-Christ parallel, is more allusively suggestive than programmatically mimetic.] But this diligent search in ancient tomes for the ultimate source of Christy's apotheosis overlooks Synge's clear Modem Drama, 4' (1998) 371 372 JOSEPH DEV LIN statement of the wellspring from which the playboy bubbled forth. In the preface to the play, Synge writes: In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent , and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks,'1 The concern of the writer here is clearly focused on an existing culture, not an ancient one, albeit existing only "for a few years more." Although the preface deals primarily with Synge's use of the language of the folk, it also suggests his borrowing of their ideas and stories.s And the use of a folktale as the basis of a play is a strategy that has already been clearly demonstrated in the earlier Synge work In the Shadow of the Glen6 In that play he used a tale he had recorded from the Aran storyteller Pat Dirane'" Synge collected many folk stories during his visits to the west. His book The Aran Islands is full of them, and they appear in much of his prose. Synge's use of these materials in his plays has usually been viewed as a subsuming of folk matter into the larger framework of a modernist dramatic structure , but a closer exam ination of The Playboy suggests that another process is at work. In a list put together by Sean 6 Suilleabhain of folktale types appearing in Synge's work, I found the following entry under the heading "International Tale-Types." 3. Two other Types, 1640 (The Brave Tailor) and 300 (The Dragon-Slayer) are combined in a version noted by Synge in Inishmaan. This is a rare fusion in Irish slorytelling , however. The small hero (not necessarily a tailor) boasts...

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