LANGUAGE and IDENTITY in POST-1800 IRISH DRAMA DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas I
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LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN POST-1800 IRISH DRAMA DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Dawn E. Duncan, B.A., M.Ed. Denton, Texas May, 1994 LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN POST-1800 IRISH DRAMA DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Dawn E. Duncan, B.A., M.Ed. Denton, Texas May, 1994 Duncan, Dawn E., Language and Identity in Post-1800 Irish Drama. Doctor of Philosophy (English), May, 1994, 249 pp., works cited, 115 titles. Using a sociolinguistic and post-colonial approach, I analyze Irish dramas that speak about language and its connection to national identity. In order to provide a systematic and wide-ranging study, I have selected plays written at approximately fifty- year intervals and performed before Irish audiences contemporary to their writing. The writers selected represent various aspects of Irish society—religiously, economically, and geographically—and arguably may be considered the outstanding theatrical Irish voices of their respective generations. Examining works by Alicia LeFanu, Dion Boucicault, W.B. Yeats, and Brian Friel, I argue that the way each of these playwrights deals with language and identity demonstrates successful resistance to the destruction of Irish identity by the dominant language power. The work of J. A. Laponce and Ronald Wardhaugh informs my language dominance theory. Briefly, when one language pushes aside another language, the cultural identity begins to shift. The literature of a nation provides evidence of the shifting perception. Drama, because of its performance qualities, provides the most complex and complete literary evidence. The effect of the performed text upon the audience validates a cultural reception beyond what would be possible with isolated readers. Following a theoretical introduction, I analyze the plays in chronological order. Alicia LeFanu's The Sons of Erin; or. Modern Sentiment (1812) gently pleads for equal treatment in a united Britain. Dion Boucicault's three Irish plays, especially The Colleen Bawn (1860) but also Arrah-na-Pogue (1864) and The Shaughraun (1875), satirically conceal rebellious nationalist tendencies under the cloak of melodrama. W. B. Yeats's The Countess Cathleen (1899) reveals his romantic hope for healing the national identity through the powers of language. However, The Only Jealousy of F.mer (1919) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939) reveal an increasing distrust of language to mythically heal Ireland. Brian Friel's Translations (1980), supported by The Communication Cord (1982) and Making History (1988), demonstrates a post-colonial move to manipulate history in order to tell the Irish side of a British story, constructing in the process an Irish identity that is postnational. Copyright by Dawn Elaine Duncan 1994 in ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks to the librarians and staff of The National Library of Ireland and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; to the management and staff of the Abbey Theatre for permission to use the Abbey Records, and for space to work; to the Yeats International Society for a scholarship which aided my research in Ireland; to Thomas Docherty, WJ. McCormack, and Brendan Kennelly of the English department, and Hilary Tovey and Brian Torode of the Sociology department of Trinity College, Dublin, as well as Richard Pine of Radio-Television Eireann, for conferring and advising. Special thanks to the Council of Trustees of the National Library of Ireland for permission to use material from the Yeats and LeFanu papers. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter page I. INTRODUCTION TO STUDY 1 II. ALICIA LEFANU: A PLEA FOR EQUALITY AFTER THE ACT OF UNION 25 III. DION BOUCICAULT: A REBELLIOUS LAUGH AT SNOBBISH NOTIONS OF NOBILITY 77 IV. W.B. YEATS: TESTING THE POWER OF LANGUAGE TO HARM OR TO HEAL 131 V. BRIAN FRIEL: TRANSLATING EXPERIENCE INTO A POSTNATIONAL IDENTITY 194 WORKS CITED 243 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION TO STUDY Literary scholars of my generation realize that the object of their studies may not have changed from those of generations past—we are all still engaged in analyzing literature; however, we now attempt to rationalize the experience of literature by providing an appropriate theoretical base. I say appropriate because I firmly believe that those in the scholarly community who lock themselves into one theory privilege that theory at the risk of missing many other textual meanings and effects. Given that I myself practice an eclectic approach to literary theory, I carefully consider which theory seems most applicable to any text or set of texts. Where Irish literature is concerned, I have found two critical approaches inextricably bound and highly valuable in opening up the meaning and social significance of a text. These two cooperative interests are sociolinguistics and post-colonialism. Using sociolinguistic and post-colonial theories, I analyze Irish dramas that speak about language and its connection to national/cultural identity. Drama, as both a literate art and an oral performance, reveals the political ramifications of issues of orality and literacy at work in colonial and post-colonial Ireland. I have selected Irish plays written at approximately fifty year intervals since the Act of Union, the point by which English language dominance had succeeded, so that shifts in perception may be examined from 1800 up to the present. Specifically, I analyze works by Alicia LeFanu, Dion Boucicault, W.B. Yeats, and Brian Friel. Plays written by these playwrights in English for Irish audiences show both the impact of Irish culture on the writer and the impact of the individual artist on the changing Irish identity. I argue that the particular way each of these playwrights deals with language 1 2 and its correlation to identity demonstrates a strategic pattern for successful resistance to the destruction of Irish identity by the dominant language power. Certainly I am not the first to explore the problem of language and identity as evidenced in Irish literature. A. C. Partridge in Language and Society in Anglo-Irish Literature (1984) provides an overview of the social role of language in Irish culture and literature. While this study may serve as a starting point in the discussion, it is by no means exhaustive nor does Partridge delve deeply into any one text in the course of the survey. A linguistic overview is provided by Loreto Todd in The Language of Irish Literature (1989). A valuable tool because of its simplified technical discussion of language usage in Irish literature, Todd's study is a broad view of usage patterns with little discussion of cultural identity. In addition, there are numerous historical studies of Irish literature that touch upon the conflict and cooperation between languages involved in the body of national literature that is written in both Irish and Irish-English. One of the most helpful of this type is Roger McHugh and Maurice Harmon's A Short History of Anglo-Irish Literature, From Its Origins to the Present Day (1982). Though each of these scholars has contributed to a better understanding of the role of language in Irish literature, and therefore to an understanding of the effect of language use on the Irish identity, a systematic study of dramatic literature representative of generational perspectives would illuminate the issue of language and identity and the shifting Irish perception of what it means to be Irish. To provide this dual illumination—how the cultural context shapes the text, and how the text shapes/reflects cultural identity—I provide exhaustive readings of dramatic texts that treat the language/identity issue. From the early nineteenth century, I bring to light a lost play by an important Irish woman. From the latter nineteenth centuiy, I provide a re-reading of Irish melodrama, a reading that demands a reconsideration of the author and his works. For the early twentieth centuiy example, I turn to Yeats's plays, providing new insight into their meaning based upon his structural and thematic concern with the uses of language. 3 Finally, in my choice of a contemporary Irish playwright and his work, I enjoin the post- colonial critics to accept Irish writers into their consciousness as full members of the debate with a right to speak their part against colonialism and to attempt a reconstruction of their story and identity. Since the development of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the early 1970s, numerous scholars have studied the link between language and cultural identity. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, our perception of the world is shaped by the language that we speak. Though sociolinguistics has arisen as a field of study only during the last twenty-five years, linguists have become increasingly aware of the ramifications of social setting on language. As Edward Sapir points out, "The importance of language as a whole for the definition, expression, and transmission of culture is undoubted" ("Language" 62). In Harry Hoijer's analysis of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, he makes much of the concept that different languages speak different world views rather than merely providing different labels for the same world (120). Though the idea of nationhood is a relatively recent concept historically, language has become "a symbol of [national] identity" (Sapir 65). Recently sociolinguists have combined their research into shifts in national language