| The subject of this study is the impact of imperialism on the cultures of the Irish and the African American and their resulting literary revivals. Writing during the modernist period, the Irish playwright, John Millington Synge, and the American writer, Jean Toomer, created literary works that celebrate the mythical Irish and African past while negating the power of this past to establish or renew a cultural identity in the present. Both of these authors situate the mythic past within their female characters, creating protagonists who serve to greater and lesser degrees as potential "race mothers" who can render the colonized invisible other visible again. These women are destined to be frustrated in this role, however, because of the modern estrangement from their male counterparts. |
