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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1979 The eltC icism of James Stephens. Sylvia Rody Mclaurin Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Mclaurin, Sylvia Rody, "The eC lticism of James Stephens." (1979). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 3342. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/3342 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This was produced from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. 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LONDON WC1R 4EJ, ENGLAND Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7921972 MCLAURIN# SYLVIA RODY THE CELTICISM OF JAMES STEPHEN8, THE LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COL,# PH.D, # 1979 Uruve M i______ International 300 n. zeeb road, ann arbor, mi 48io6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE CELTICISM OF JAMES STEPHENS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillm ent of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy i n The Department of English by S y lv ia Rody M cLaurin B.A. Bel haven College, 1966 M.A. Louisiana State University, 1969 May 1979 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my advisor Dr. Donald E. Stanford whose spon­ soring of this study was an anchor in an overwhelming flood of infor­ mation and whose example illustrated the essence of scholarship. My gratitude is also to be extended to the members of my committee, Dr. John Wildman, Dr. Rebecca Crump, Dr. Francis deCaro, and Dr. Lawrence Sasek, whose advice and patient reading of the manuscript were inval­ u a b le . it is to Dr. William Carlos Durrett, my undergraduate major pro­ fessor, particular gratitude is given, for he firs t introduced me to Irish literature and inspired me to pursue graduate study. To D r. D onald W. Newsom and M rs. Sarah Sue Thorpe goes s in c e r e s t appreciation for their support and generous technical assistance. E s p e c ia lly am I g r a t e f u l to my husband Wayne who was c o n s ta n t in sustenance, patience, and understanding even as he completed his own doctorate. And I wish to express special appreciation to my daughters who shared with me the beauty and fascination of the Irish sagas; the plea of "tell me a story" and the delighted reception made these tales live again in their traditional mode. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. ......................................................................................... I i TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................... H i ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... v l i CHAPTER ONE— CELTIC CULTURE AND THE DEVELOPEMENT OF CELTIC LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS ............................................................ 1 I. Historical-cultural Developement of Celtic Ethos and Stephens' Use of Details of Celtic Life ..................................... 1 Wars and Invasions ......................................................................................... k Socio-economic Patterns .......................................................................... 6 II. The Developement of Celtic Literature ....................................... 13 The Role of Bards and F? 1 id ................................................................... 13 General Celtic Literary Characteristics ...................................... 18 Periods of Literature and Their Characteristics . 2k The Celtic Revival ........................................................................................ 31 III. The Myths— Definition and Evolution and the Heroic I d e a d ...................................................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER TWO— STEPHENS' NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE.......................................................... 51 I. The Relationship Between Stephens' Redactions and Manuscript and Other Redacted Versions ..................................... 55 II. Stephens' Use of Saga Conventions ...................................................... 69 I I I . S tephens as S h e n a c h ie ................................................................................... 110 CHAPTER THREE— THE CELTIC HERO FIGURE IN STEPHENS' REDACTIONS . 123 I. Characteristics of the Saga Hero ...................................................... ]2k II. The Characteristics Interpreted Through Stephens' Male Persons ....................................................................................................... 135 i i i Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER FOUR— THE CELTIC HEROINE IN STEPHENS' REDACTIONS. 170 I. The Celtic Woman ......................................................................................... 170 II. Types of Heroines in Stephens' Redactions .............................. 182 The Spouse-mother ......................................................................................... 183 The Victim of F a te .................................................................................. 191 The Strategist-queen .................................................................................. 20k CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................. 223 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 230 VITA ............................................................................................................................................ 2 36 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT The myths and legends of Celtic Ireland contain numerous episodes of purest fantasy. Yet the serious study of these tales proves them a continuous illustration of the day-to-day life of the Celt as well as his times of celebration and of crisis. James Stephens, like other Irish writers, saw in these early tales material for his own writing. But unlike Yeats, Stephens turned to the saga material only after his reputation had been made in the modern mode. Stephens found in the sagas characters who, like their modern counterparts, were m ulti­ dimensional and might be treated realistically, and in his portrayals he rejected the enervating influence adopted by a number of other wri­ ters of the Renaissance--the faddish mistiness of the Celtic Twilight. Rather, Stephens emended and slightly reorganized the original narratives to give proper motivation to the character action and inserted conver­ sation and description that both universalized as well as individualized

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