Journal of Foreign Languages, Cultures & Civilizations

Narratology as a Means of Revealing Irish Traditions in J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World
Wajdi Fahmi Alminri, Hardev Kaur

Abstract
This paper studies J.M. Synge‘s The Playboy of the Western World (1911) from a narrative perspective. It will concentrate on the play‘s discourse. In essence, the play‘s literary discourse conveys the author‘s point of view regarding the contemporary social affairs in Ireland. The study will focus on the imaginary aspects of the Irish society depicted in the play. Therefore, two narrative elements will be interpreted. They are the characters and the settings. On the one hand, the characters will be analyzed as fictional replica of the Synge‘s implied voice in the text. That is, the characters‘ discourse is a literary manifestation of the author‘s abstract conceptualization of the Irish social disposition that undergone radical changes. On the other hand, the play‘s setting is going to be analyzed as a quasi-real appropriation of the authentic Irish society portrayed by Synge. These elements are going to be analyzed by applying Mikail Bakhtin‘s concept of polyphony. The concept of polyphony refers to the author‘s implicit voice that is carried out by literary characters‘ explicit voice in literary texts.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jflcc.v6n2a2