Journal of
Languages and Culture

  • Abbreviation: J. Lang. Cult.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 2141-6540
  • DOI: 10.5897/JLC
  • Start Year: 2010
  • Published Articles: 132

Review

Colonialism and the recreation of identity: The Irish Theatre as case study

Amal Riyadh Kitishat
Department of English Language and Literature, Al –Balqa' Applied University, Ajloun University College, Jordan
Email: [email protected], [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 28 August 2012
  •  Published: 30 November 2012

Abstract

 

This study aims at highlighting the role of the Irish theatre in reviving Irish culture and establishing a dependent Irish identity. It also seeks to prove that theatre is used as means of resistance to English colonialism; it presents W. B. Yeats as an example of the Irish dramatists who played a significant role in the recreation of Irish national identity as an independent distinct identity. Actually, Yeats’ efforts in the national employment of literature for national purposes were the fountainhead by which he was able to present the national cause of his country. The study concludes that the Irish theatre played a great national role by presenting nationalism-oriented plays that aroused the sense of national feelings of audiences and created a national identity as well. Irish theatre imposingly for grounded itself powerfully not on the literary level, but also on the national level by its role in identity creation.

 

Key words: Colonialism and the recreation of identity, theatre and nationalism, Irish culture, The Abbey Theatre, literature and identity formation, multi –culturalism, new historicism.