Non-Modern Culture in Brian Friel’s Plays
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v16i0.3561Resumen
This article argues that Friel’s concern with paganism goes beyond his well-known play Dancing at Lughnasa: it actually extends to Faith Healer and Wonderful Tennesssee. Like Lughnasa festival, shamanic healing and the mythological Otherworld are also parts of Irish pagan traditions. By depicting the Irish people’s spiritual world of supernatural power, gods, and realms, Friel shows that pagan cultures are not mummified in the museums or memoirs but alive in their corrupted, erratic forms and interwoven with Christian beliefs and modern rationalities, whose connection with the past and engagement
with the present challenge the mutually excluded category of tradition and modernity, and exemplify what David Lloyd calls “non-modern culture.”
Keywords: Non-modern culture; pagan traditions; shaman; the Otherworld; modernity; hybridity.
Referencias
Andrews, Elmer. The Art of Brian Friel: Neither Reality Nor Dreams, St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Bertha, Csilla. “Six Characters in Search of a Faith: The Mythic and the Mundane in Wonderful
Tennessee,” Irish University Review, Vol. 29, No. 1. 1999.
Corbett, Tony. Brian Friel: Decoding the Language of the Tribe, Ireland: The Liffey Press, 2002.
Cowan, Tom. Fire in the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit, Harper: San Francisco,1993.
Davidson, H. R. Ellis. Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions, Syracuse University Press, 1988.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, translated from the French by Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series LXXVI, Princeton University Press. 1964.
Friel, Brian. Faith Healer. Brian Friel: Plays 1. Faber and Faber, 1984.
______. “In Interview with Mel Gussow (1991).” Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews: 1964- 1999. Ed. by Christopher Murray, Faber and Faber, 1999.
______. Wonderful Tennessee, Brian Friel: Plays 2, Faber and Faber, 1999.
Grene, Nicholas. “Five ways of looking at Faith Healer.” The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, Ed. Anthony Roche, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Jones, Leslie Ellen. Druid, Shaman, Priest: Metaphors of Celtic Paganism. Hisarlik Press, 1996.
Kiberd, Declan. The Irish Writer and the World, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Lloyd, David. Ireland after History, University of Notre Dame Press in association with Field Day, 1999.
______. Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-colonial Moment. Duke University Press: Durham, 1993.
MacNeill, Maire. The Festival of Lughnasa: A Study of the Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of Harvest, Oxford University Press, 1962.
McGrath, F. C. Brian Friel: (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion and Politics. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999.
Ó Giollain, Diarmuid. Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity. Cork University Press, 2000.
Pine, Richard. The Diviner: The Art of Brian Friel, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1999.
Ravenfox, “Celtic Tree Calendar: A Guide to Tree and their Symbolism,” 27 July, 2011.
templedarkmoon.com/celtictree.pdf.>
Rutherford, Ward. Celtic Mythology: The Nature and Influence of Celtic Myth – from Druidism to Arthurian Legend. The Aquarian Press. 1987.
Spaan, David B. “The Place of Manannan Mac Lir in Irish Mythology” Folklore, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Autumn, 1965), pp. 176-195.
Strain, Margaret M. “‘Renouncing Chance’: Salvation and the Sacred in Brian Friel’s Faith Healer.” Renascence. 57: I. 2004.
Throne, Marilyn. “Brian Friel’s Faith Healer: Portrait of a Shaman.” The Journal of Irish Literature. 16. 3. 1987.
