Endurance And Reconciliation—The Retelling Of Greek Tragedies In The English Drama Of 20th Century Ireland

Since the advent of Christianity, Ireland has boasted of a rich tradition of classical studies. Under the cruel oppression and relentless exploitation of Britain, the Irish Gaelic tradition was once ever on the brink of extinction and could not compete with Britain literary tradition. As early as in the period of the Irish Renaissance, Irish elites resorted to ancient Greek literature to aid disadvantaged Gaelic tradition in breaking the monopoly of Britain literary heritage. Since Irish Renaissance, dramatists of English Drama of 20 th Century Ireland have retold Greek tragedies in different ways, achieving the reconciliation between reality and art after endurance in the political and social context. W. B. Yeats, the symbol of Irish poetry in the 20 th century, translating and adapting Sophocles’ masterpiece Oedipus at Colonus, explored into the dialectic interaction between National Poetic Drama and Community Identity. In his version, the decaying exile Oedipus underwent hardships and finally experienced deification after revelation, prophesying about the freedom of Irish people from the manipulation of politics and Nationalism as well as their participation in moulding the brand-new dignified, pure and intellectual Irish Cultural Spirit. Seamus Heaney, a great poet from a Catholic family in Northern Ireland, witnessed the hatred and conflict between Catholic community and Protestant community in his childhood and then pursued the moderation of art on reality in his poetic career. After joining Field Day Theatre, he was engaged in creating the imaginary space of “The Fifth Province” and successfully adapted Sophocles’ another masterpiece Philoctetes. In his version The Cure at Troy, justice of history, combined with well-disposed humanism, managed to disperse accumulated rancor and facilitate a mutual understanding and toleration. Marina Carr, a promising and influencial contemporary Irish woman dramatist, reflects on the malicious distortion and neglection of women’s writing in Irish history and tries to deconstruct the social and cultural ideology based on patriarchal domination in “Celtic Tiger” period. In By the Bog of Cat…, her loose adaptation of Euripides’ masterpiece Medea, the heroin Hester set fire to her own house in defiance of all the neighbours, committed suicide and at last killed her daughter, representing the survival dilemma and emotional abjection of Irish women from the Traveller Community. Besides Yeats, Heaney and Carr, many more Irish writers have experimented on and will experiment on the Greek tragedies to express their own idea of establishing the harmony between history and art.