Envisaging a Post-Colonial Theatre: W. B. Yeats and the Cuchulain Cycle of Plays

Abstract

Starting from Edward Said‘s claim that W.B. Yeats‘s work should be seen as seminal in the process of Ireland‘s decolonisation, despite the artist‘s Ascendancy roots and Protestant sympathies, the paper focuses on the Yeatsian theatre as exemplified by the five plays which cluster around the figure of the Celtic hero Cuchulain (On Baile‘s Strand, The Golden Helmet, At The Hawk‘s Well, The Only Jealousy of Emer, and The Death of Cuchulain) in order to prove that the hybrid dramatic forms adopted by Yeats, which rework the Celtic myth within Greek and Japanese theatrical models, may be seen as a move away from ―the regional nativism‖ characteristic of much of the Revival writings towards a ―radically liberating‖ (Deane 1990: 5) vision on a ―contaminated‖ culture, characterised by plurality and dialogism. As such, the Cuchulain cycle of plays may be read not only as a reflection of the Yeatsian decolonising project, but also as an early instance of a postcolonial drama, whose hybrid paradigm subverts and revaluates both imperialist and nationalist assumptions on essentialist notions of identity.