| Sean O’Casey(1880-1964)is a leading figure in the Irish Renaissance movement of the20 th century and the most important playwright of the 1920 s in the Abbey Theatre.“Dublin Trilogy”,consisting of The Shadow of a Gunman(1923),Juno and the Paycock(1924)and The Plough and the Stars(1926),has become O’Casey’s masterpiece recreating the history of wars before and after the founding of the Irish Free State,which,in return,makes the playwright a recognized anti-war writer.In the existing scholarship,researches both at home and abroad tend to enumerate O’Casey’s utilization of speeches of characters and disclosure of the nature of war or religion in “Dublin Trilogy” and analyze the playwright’s life experience to demonstrate his anti-war or anti-religion attitude and the causes.Yet,three limitations can be identified:firstly,there is a lack of dynamic presentation of O’Casey’s anti-war attitude in “Dublin Trilogy”;secondly,there is a lack of effective research on the correlation between O’Casey’s anti-war/anti-religion attitudes;thirdly,there is too much focus on the influence of O’Casey’s war experience during his creative period on his anti-war attitude,which fails to comprehensively examine the era O’Casey lived in and his personal experience.In the light of these,this thesis takes “Dublin Trilogy” as the object of study,analyzes and compares the images of the war participants,including warriors and God,to reveal the developmental characteristics of O’Casey’s continuously deepening anti-war attitude through close reading and comparison of the text.Biographical criticism is applied to investigate the era O’Casey lived in and his life experience.This thesis analyzes the influence of wars caused by nationalism and the culture impacted by nationalism on O’Casey,elucidates the causes of the development of O’Casey’s continuously deepening anti-war attitude,and further goes into the literary,humanistic,and practical values of O’Casey’s anti-war plays.The thesis is divided into five parts:The first part(introduction)includes an introduction to O’Casey and “Dublin Trilogy”,a literature review,the purpose,significance,methodology,and framework of the research.To analyze the developmental characteristics of O’Casey’s anti-war attitude,the second part and the third part focus on O’Casey’s portrayal of the war participants in “Dublin Trilogy”.The second part analyzes the image of warriors in The Shadow of a Gunman,Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars successively.Through comparison,this thesis has discovered that the image of warriors deteriorates from self-expressive to boastful,cowardly and ruthless,and finally to vain,timid and inhuman.The third part analyzes the image of God in each of the three plays successively.Through comparison,it is found that this image deteriorates from seemingly peaceful to unpeaceful,and finally to warlike.The third chapter also analyzes the image of females,which serves as a foil to God in the three plays in turn.Through comparison,it is discerned that this image improves from the unconscious promoter of peace to the peaceful on the language level,and finally to the peaceful on the action level.From the above analysis and comparison,it is not difficult to perceive the developmental characteristics of O’Casey’s continuously deepening anti-war attitude.The fourth part further inquiries into the influence of an era of nationalism in which O’Casey lived in and his life experience on his anti-war attitude and accounts for the causes of the development of his continuously deepening anti-war attitude.Although O’Casey’s war experience before playwriting had laid the foundation for his anti-war attitude,his anti-war attempts in his plays were successively constrained by the mainstream culture that praised anti-British actions.Nevertheless,as his dramatic career became more successful,and as he continued to experience wars fought for national independence and religion,his idea of expressing anti-war attitude became more insistent.Thus,his anti-war attitude in“Dublin Trilogy” took on the continuously deepening developmental characteristics.The fifth part(conclusion)points out that war experience before playwriting had planted the seeds of anti-war attitude in O’Casey’s heart.However,these seeds were not able to develop into extraordinary literary output until playwriting.From the concession in the formation stage to the compromise in the growth stage,to the insistence in the mature stage,the anti-war attitude in “Dublin Trilogy” underwent several changes.Nevertheless,the anti-war core throughout each period remained the same.This study has also discovered that,in the creative period of the anti-war plays,O’Casey’s anti-religion attitude is a part of his anti-war attitude.In addition,apart from the war experience mentioned by predecessors,the factors affecting the development of O’Casey’s anti-war attitude also include an era of nationalism,O’Casey’s war experience before playwriting,the constraint from the mainstream culture,and the confidence of the playwright in his plays.Eventually,along with the continuously deepening anti-war attitude,O’Casey’s “Dublin Trilogy” gradually broke away from the constraint of the mainstream culture of nationalism,injected unique power into Irish literature,reflected on wars waged for national independence and religion,and pioneered in Irish dramatic creation in the 20 th century. |
