Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hewitt, Seán

Titel

Dialectics, Irony, and J. M. Synge’s The Well of the Saints

Ist Teil von

• The Review of English studies, 2017-09, Vol.68 (286), p.773-839

Ort / Verlag

Oxford University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Quelle

Oxford Journals 2020 Humanities

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A short manuscript fragment, A Rabelaisian Rhapsody (1898–1900), affords us a unique and overlooked insight into the structures and key concerns of J. M. Synge’s entire dramatic oeuvre. A Rabelaisian Rhapsody reveals, firstly, Synge’s early conceptions and ideals of drama as a form; secondly, the dialogue is used to express a more wide-ranging ‘creed’ of aesthetic, moral and spiritual value in different literary approaches; thirdly, it links both of these to particular modes of theological thought, thereby illustrating how the structures, forms and textures of Synge’s later drama are rooted in a pressing desire to anchor literary expression to spiritual wellbeing. The ironic and dialectical structures found in this piece form the core structures of Synge’s dramatic thought, and are drawn from both Old Irish literature and contemporary political debates, as well as from the symbolist thought of Yeats, Blake and others. In The Well of the Saints (1905), we find the final synthesis of this structure, and the preparation for Synge’s overt sociological statements regarding modernization in Ireland. Over many years, Synge established a spiritual basis for his aesthetic, countering asceticism with pantheism, restriction with Rabelaisian excess. The various iterations of this conflict can be traced over numerous dialogues, scenarios and plays in his oeuvre, and this dialectical structure became subsumed into a larger literary vision of nonconformity and multidirectional irony. In turn, Synge’s spiritual and aesthetic opposition to ascetic or conforming figures began to influence his understanding of political and social change in contemporary Ireland.