Caiet Lit. Eng. R-E III Sem1-1

Universitatea OVIDIUS Constana
Departamentul ID-IFR
Facultatea de Litere
ISTORIA LITERATURII
ENGLEZE
Caiet de Studiu Individual
Specializarea
LIMBA SI LITERATURA ROMANALIMBA SI LITERATURA ENGLEZA
Anul de studii III
Semestrul 1
Instructor disciplin IFR:

Ludmila Martanovschi
2012
Contents
CONTEMPORARY BRITISH
DRAMA AND POETRY
CONTENTS
Page
Unit
Title
000
The Theatre of the Absurd: Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot

Objectives Unit 1
1.1 To present Samuel Beckett in the context of the theatre of the absurd
1.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in Waiting for Godot
1.3 To analyze the title and the characters in Waiting for Godot
Progress Test Unit 1
Answer Key (Suggestions)
Bibliography Unit 1
Power Relations in Harold Pinters The Caretaker

Objectives Unit 2
2.1 To present Harold Pinter in the context of the theatre of the absurd
2.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in The Caretaker
2.3 To analyze the title and the characters in The Caretaker
Bibliography Unit 2
Postmodernism: Tom Stoppards

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Objectives Unit 3
3.1 To present Tom Stoppard in the context of postmodernism
3.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in
3.3 To analyze the title and the characters in
Bibliography Unit 3
The Feminine Perspective in Caryl Churchills Top Girls

Objectives Unit 4
4.1 To present Caryl Churchill in the context of British drama
4.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in Top Girls
4.3 To analyze the title and the characters in Top Girls
Bibliography Unit 4
Contents
Irish Identity Issues in Brian Friels Translations

Objectives Unit 5
5.1 To present Brian Friel in the context of Irish drama
5.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in Translations
5.3 To analyze the title and the characters in Translations
Bibliography Unit 5
Contemporary British Poetry: Ted Hughes

Objectives Unit 6
6.1 To present Ted Hughes in the context of contemporary British poetry
6.2 To explore the main themes in Ted Hughess poetry
6.3 To analyze Ted Hughess ars poetica
Bibliography Unit 6
Contemporary Irish Poetry: Seamus Heaney

Objectives Unit 7
7.1 To present Seamus Heaney in the context of contemporary poetry in
English
7.2 To explore the main themes in Seamus Heaneys poetry
7.3 To analyze Seamus Heaneys ars poetica
Bibliography Unit 7
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Observaie: numrul unitilor de nvare este egal cu numrul edinelor de curs

la forma de nvmnt zi (28 ore curs = 14 UI, 14 ore curs = 7 UI)
Introduction
DRAMA AND POETRY
Introduction
foto
Dear Student,
Continuing the study of Twentieth Century English Literature started in

the second year, this course covers later developments of the past
century, focusing on the most important directions in drama and poetry.
The students will be familiarized with the work of several major
playwrights: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Caryl
Churchill and Brian Friel, as well as the poetry of Ted Hughes and
Seamus Heaney. During the course students are encouraged to respond
critically to, and write coherently on, the texts suggested for discussion.
You will be evaluated on your assignments, tests and performance in the
final examination.
Best,
Ludmila Martanovschi
Acknowledgement
This is to acknowledge the fact that Prof. Dr. Adina Ciugureanu teaches the series of lectures of
Contemporary British Drama and Poetry to third year full-time students and her book-length
study Post-War Anxieties. British Literature in the 1950s and the 1960s (Constanta: Ex Ponto,
2006) is obligatory reading for the distance learning students taking this corresponding course. I
would also like to mention here my indebtedness to her work and my gratitude for her academic
guidance.
Unit 1
The Theatre of the Absurd: Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot
Contents
Objectives Unit 1............................

1.1 To present Samuel Beckett in the context of the theatre of the absurd
1.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in Waiting for Godot
1.3 To analyze the title and the characters in Waiting for Godot
Progress Test Unit 1..........................................
Answer Key (Suggestions) .....................................................................
Bibliography Unit 1 ..........................
Page
000
OBJECTIVES UNIT 1
The main objectives of Unit 1 are:
To present Samuel Beckett in the context of the theatre of the absurd

To explore the structure and the main themes in Waiting for Godot
To analyze the title and the characters in Waiting for Godot
1.1 Samuel Beckett in the context of the theatre of the absurd

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) wrote poetry, fiction and drama. Born and educated in
Dublin, he went to Paris where he started writing in French and translating his own work in
English. He knew James Joyce and he shared with the modernist writer the urge to extend the
scope of words. His first published works: Whoroscope (1930), a volume of verse, More
Pricks than Kicks (1934), a volume of short-stories, Murphy (1938), a novel, had little impact
on the readership of the age. The series of novels Watt (1944), Molloy (1951), Malone Dies
(1952) and The Unnamable (1953) gave him the chance to express the sense of despair and
meaninglessness with which he approached reality. His first play Waiting for Godot
originally written in French was first presented in London in the authors English translation
in 1955. Among the later plays that continued to move towards minimalism by including
diminishing dialogue and less action, the most important are: Endgame (1958), Krapps Last
Tape (1959) and Happy Days (1961). Becketts work appeared in a cultural context that
influenced him and prepared the audience for the reception of his plays.
Surrealism, especially productive in the visual arts, aims at dismantling customary
modes of seeing and presents the audience with the inexplicable. Often artists juxtapose
elements with no culturally given connection in order to force the viewer to question, and
eventually change, his or her preconceived ideas about life and art (Counsell 139). Along
these lines, Beckett makes the audience recognize that the stage is a material place and that
the distinction from the real world is quite obvious (Counsell 141). He does not offer the
audience an imitation of the world as realist drama does, but a theatrical representation of the
world pointing to itself as theatre.
Non-naturalistic drama can also be considered an influence on Becketts work since
his characters seem to borrow features from the Greek tragedy, the medieval mystery and
morality plays as well as modern symbolist drama represented by Strindberg and Yeats
(Kennedy 35).

Existentialism is embraced both by philosophy and literature as its principles seem to
express the condition of humanity in early twentieth century. As Jean Paul Sartre argued, the
viewing subject and the object it views are defined in a process which is relational; human
beings perceptually shape their world, and in doing so define themselves. To live
authentically is to live with the recognition that all meanings and the self they reflect are
constructs (Counsell 138).
Theatre presents a series of strategies for enstaging the existentialist perspective. The
new dramatic mode illustrated by Beckett, Ionescu and Pinter was first called the theater of
the absurd by Martin Esslin. In his article, Esslin explained the ideas that the playwrights
expressed in their work:
it is the theatre, which is multidimensional and more than merely language or
literature, which is the only instrument to express the bewildering complexity of the
human condition. The human condition being what it is, with man small, helpless,
insecure, and unable ever to fathom the world in all its hopelessness, death, and
absurdity, the theatre has to confront him with the bitter truth that most human
endeavor is irrational and senseless, that communication between human beings is
well-nigh impossible, and that the world will forever remain an impenetrable
mystery. (13)
Along the lines established by Esslin, it has been noticed that the absurd may also be
strongly connected to language and may manifest itself in inverted logical reasoning, false
syllogism, free association, and the discourse of real or feigned madness (Ciugureanu 36).
Waiting for Godot illustrates all these characteristics from the very first scene.
Self-study Test 1.1 Please provide the answer in the blank space provided.
Identify the most important cultural trend that influenced Samuel
Becketts work.
Obligatory reading:
Ciugureanu, Adina. The Anxiety of Living: Existentialism and the
Absurd in the 50s and 60s. Post-War Anxieties. British Literature in the
1950s and the 1960s. Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2006. 7- 33.
Ciugureanu, Adina. The Anxiety of Incertitude: Samuel Beckett. PostWar Anxieties. British Literature in the 1950s and the 1960s. Constanta:
Ex Ponto, 2006. 35-58.
Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

1.2 The structure and the main themes in Waiting for Godot
The structure
Waiting for Godot is defined as a tragicomedy, alternating tragic and comic situations.
In reflecting on Beckett choosing to divide his play only in two acts, Michael Worton asserts:
He knew that in mathematical theory the passage from 0 to 1 marks a major and
real change of state, and that the passage from 1 to 2 implies the possibility of
infinity, so two acts were enough to suggest that Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo
and Lucky and the boy, will go on meeting in increasingly reduced physical and
mental circumstances but will never not meet again. (70)
In the first act the protagonists, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for a certain
Godot. They pass the time talking, reminiscing and even contemplating suicide. The person
they are waiting for does not arrive, but two other characters, Pozzo and Lucky do make an
appearance. Pozzo is a domineering master who forces Lucky to dance and think aloud. The
latter breaks his silence only to utter a speech that is devoid of grammar or discernable sense.
After the two visitors leave, Vladimir and Estragon go back to their routine. Finally, a boy
enters, informing them that Godot will come the next day.
In the second act the two tramps continue waiting: they ask each other questions, try
to show that they are happier together than when separated, and imitate the visitors they had
met the day before. Pozzo and Lucky reappear, but this time Pozzo is blind and depends on
Lucky. After Pozzo makes a speech, the two leave. The boy comes again, delivering the same
message, but denying having been here before. After his departure, Vladimir and Estragon try
to hang themselves, but fail miserably. In the end they decide to meet the following day to
wait for Godot.
The main themes
the search for identity;
time (exterior and interior);
memory and its failure;
friendship and its tensions;
human cruelty;
the possibility of suicide;
With Beckett the self is continually shifting and the subject changes as it moves
through time, in opposition to the previous conception of identity as stable. The sense of

stable identity is explained as being strongly connected to the concept of voluntary
memory, which involves remodelling the past in order to reflect ones current idea of it.
People recall the past not as it appeared to them then, but in a form that gives them an
appearance of continuity. People need to create an illusion that their self is always the same
(Counsell 125).
Beckett shows that this continuous self is also a product of language. One example
from the play is Luckys speech. It is one of the most surprising moments in the play since
the character is silent most of the time, but when his words do come out, they stream lacking
all grammar and representing a parody of language. This incoherent speech points to the lack
of a stable sense of self:
LUCKY: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and
Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaquaquaquaqua with white beard
quaquaquaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine
apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for
reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those
who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged into torment plunged into fire
whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that
is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even
though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast (Beckett 42-43)
Discuss the theme of identity in the play. Refer to Luckys speech.
1.3 The title and the characters in Waiting for Godot

The title
Throughout the play the audience is left waiting for a definition of who Godot is.
Vladimir and Estragon themselves give meaning to their being on stage since they are waiting
for Godot. However, although in this they have been compared to the quest hero, the fact that
Godot never comes shows that their mission is completely devoid of substance. A most
revealing explanation about Godot is provided by Worton:

he is simultaneously whatever we think he is and not what we think he is: he is an
absence, who can be interpreted at moments as God, death, the lord of the manor, a
benefactor, even Pozzo, but Godot has a function rather than a meaning. He stands
for what keeps us chained to and in existence, he is the unknowable that represents
hope in an age when there is no hope, he is whatever fiction we want him to be as
long as he justifies our life-as-waiting. (71)
The characters
The main characters form two pairs and their features of non-personal or puppet-like
abstraction (Kennedy 35) made them interesting to the audience.
Estragon and Vladimir have often been intrepreted as the two halves of the same
personality. Although they are different especially in their performance, the two are in a
continous interaction, forming one entity. Estragon is heart-centered, his lines showing a lot
of emotion from hope to despair, and from rebelliousness to dependence on his partner
(Kennedy 36). Vladimir is mind-centered, reflecting upon destiny in a meditative way and
embodying the one whom the other can depend on (Kennedy 36). Estragon, or Gogo, is
preoccupied with his boots, which make him uncomfortable, this having been interpreted as
an indication that he is close to or of the earth (Sternlicht 54). He is sometimes sarcastic,
but overall he seems resigned to his fate. Vladimir, or Didi, is obsessed with his hat. He
seems more aware of the outside world, more articulate and more rational. Considered the
leader of the pair, he is the one who most believes in Godot (Sternlicht 55). The friendship
between the two is based on the need for communication, but it is full of tension.
Pozzo and Lucky find themselves in a master-slave relationship (Kennedy 40). The
first time they apear, Pozzo inflicts torture upon his slave, while Lucky shows terrible
servility. The violence enacted on stage has received socio-political interpretations. The
second time the two appear, Pozzo is blind and crippled, his sudden transformation pointing
to fates whims.
The Boy that appears in a repetitive fashion could stand for a Messenger as in Greek
drama, but without any message. He claims to have talked to Godot, but he never offers
revealing information about him.

Discuss at least two features of the protagonists, Vladimir and Estragon,
by referring to specific scenes in the text.
We have reached the end of Unit 1.

Concluding
Remarks
It is recommendable that you revise the main topics presented in this unit
and the objectives specified from the very beginning.
You should now take the Progress Test Unit 1, which should be handed
in to your instructor.

Discuss the types of silences in the departure scene, starting from Michael
Wortons consideration that they can be divided into: silences of
inadequacy, when characters cannot find the words they need; silences of
repression, when they are struck dumb by the attitude of their interlocutor
or by their sense that they might be breaking a social taboo; and silences
of anticipation, when they await the response of the other which will give
them a temporary sense of existence (75).
Pozzo: I must go.
Estragon: And your half-hunter?
Pozzo: I must have left it at the manor. Silence.
Estragon: Then adieu.
Vladimir: Adieu.
Pozzo: Adieu. Silence. No one moves.
Vladimir: Adieu.
Pozzo: Adieu.
Estragon: Adieu. Silence.
Pozzo: And thank you.
Vladimir: Thank you.
Pozzo: Not at all.
Estragon: Yes yes.
Pozzo: No no.
Vladimir: Yes yes.
Estragon: No no. Silence.
Pozzo: I dont seem to be able...(long hesitation)...to depart.
Estragon: Such is life. (Beckett 46-47)

Answer 1.1
The most important cultural trend that influenced Samuel Becketts work
is Existentialism as explained in subchapter 1.1 and the obligatory
reading.
Answer 1.2
The theme of identity in the play is presented in subchapter 1.2.
Answer 1.3
The protagonists features:
Estragon is heart-centered, emotional, dependent
Vladimir is mind-centered, meditative, articulate.
To be discussed in connection to the opening of act 1 (Beckett 9-12).
Bibliography Unit 1
Primary Source:
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. London: Faber and Faber, 1965.
Secondary Sources:
Counsell, Colin. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth
Century Theatre. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 112142.
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. The Tulane Drama Review 4.4
(1960): 3-15.
Kennedy, Andrew. Samuel Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991. 24-46.
Worton, Michael. Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text. The
Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Ed. John Pilling. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995. 67-87.
Unit 2
Power Relations in Harold Pinters The Caretaker
Contents
Objectives Unit 2 ............................

2.1 To present Harold Pinter in the context of the theatre of the absurd
2.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in The Caretaker
2.3 To analyze the title and the characters in The Caretaker
Page
000
OBJECTIVES Unit 2
To present Harold Pinter in the context of the theatre of the absurd

To explore the structure and the main themes in The Caretaker
To analyze the title and the characters in The Caretaker
2.1 Harold Pinter in the context of the theatre of the absurd

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) was brought up in East London and worked as an actor
before he started writing drama. His career began with the one-act play The Room (1956), set
in a small flat from which the world seemed menacing. The plays that followed, The Dumb
Waiter (1957) and The Birthday Party (1958), present a series of similarities with the earlier
one, the most important being that they all take place in a closed space which serves as a
refuge. Critics considered Pinter the inventor of a new kind of comedy, the comedy of
menace (Ousby 730).
The Caretaker (1960) established Pinter as a major playwright and became his most
discussed play. It is one of the plays that brings a thrill of recognition upon the audience.
The characters do not have reliable histories or predictable futures. They are funny and
frightening at the same time as they struggle for safety, power, territory and identity (Cornish
and Ketels 193-194). Following the success of his masterpiece, Pinter was involved in acting
and directing. He also had an important contribution to cinema, by writing several
screenplays. Among his most important later plays, the following should be mentioned: The
Homecoming (1965), No Mans Land (1974) and Betrayal (1978).
In 2005 Harold Pinter received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the jury declaring that
they granted the award to an author who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday
prattle and forces entry into oppressions closed rooms (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes
/literature/laureates/2005/index.html).
The influences that can be discovered in Pinters work are quite marked. The
ambiguous terror can be traced back to Kafka, the intensity of insecurity can be discovered in
Chekhov, the vitality of the working class idiom comes from Osborne, the shifting identitites
are recognizable from Pirandello, the anguish of the characters is borrowed from Beckett
(Cornish and Ketels 194). However, Pinter does manage to create a style of his own for
which he is celebrated.
In analyzing absurdist elements in Pinters The Caretaker, Bill Naismith considers

that: The existentialist dilemma of the characters, Davies, Aston and Mick, is underlined by
their lack of positive identity and, to an extent, by their clinging reliance on physical
objects (102). Davies is the clearest example of unstable identity in the play. He does not
seem to have any family, place to live or definite future. He cannot say what his real name is
and where he was born exactly. Moreover, he does not have any identity papers:
The repeated mention of his papers in Sidcup merely emphasizes his real
predicament no papers will alter who or what he is. He is constantly defined in
terms of possessions and objects which, cumulatively, expose the limits of his
existence: a good pair of shoes, a warm shirt, a knife to cut his bread and a clock.
(Naismith 102-103)
Very little is known for sure about the two other characters in the play, but most importantly
they all fail to build meaningful relationships with each other, the play thus establishing them
as isolated, lonely, self-centred and disconnected.
Commenting on the comparison often made between Pinter and the representatives of
the theatre of the absurd, Robert Knowles concludes:
My own view is that Beckett and Pinter use theatricality to quite opposite ends:
Godot dismantles religion and philosophy to reveal the emptiness of teleological
truth, whereas The Caretaker ultimately transcends theatricality by realising
arguably the only truth we have, existence itself. (76)
Discuss the absurdist elements of the play.
Obligatory reading: Ciugureanu, Adina. The Anxiety of Selfhood: Harold
Pinter. Post-War Anxieties. British Literature in the 1950s and the 1960s.
Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2006. 59-85.
2.2 The structure and the main themes in The Caretaker

The structure
The play is set in one room, placed in West London, having unity of time, place and
action. In discussing the dramatic structure of the play, Bill Nailsmith comments:

Three characters, very differently defined by their gestures and language, are the
sole matter for attention, and the action follows the consequences of Davies being
introduced in the room. The play is meticulously crafted, so that while attention is
always held at each moment of action by the relationship/s on stage, there is an
inevitability about the progression, and each act ends on a moment of high theatrical
tension. (114)
The first act introduces Mick whom the audience notices in a room cluttered with
objects. He leaves the stage as soon as he hears voices. The two men who enter are Aston,
Micks brother, and Davies, an old tramp. Their dialogue reveals the fact that Aston rescued
Davies from a pub fight. Aston tries to welcome his guest, by offering him a bed for the
night. In the morning, when Aston goes out, he leaves Davies a key to the room. Towards the
end of the act, Mick attacks the tramp.
The second act begins with Micks questions to Davies, interrupted by his own
monologues. Mick claims that he is the owner of the house and that he could let Davies stay,
if he paid rent. Mick leaves upn Astons return. Aston offers the tramp a job as a caretaker,
but Davies is hesitant. Later, Mick also offers him the same job, which confuses Davies about
who owns the room. The next morning rather than leaving for Sidcup to get his papers,
Davies starts complaining and making excuses for not going. Aston goes into a long
confession about previously having had electric shock treatment for a mental condition. He
also says that he wants to build a shed in the garden.
At the beginning of the third act Davies appeals to Mick for help since Aston has
been ignoring him. Mick does not pay much attention to him either, focusing on what the
place could be turned into. When Aston is heard downstairs, Mick leaves. At night Aston
wakes Davies who was making noise in his sleep, but the latter gets furious and threatens his
host. Aston says that he wants Davies to leave. He does, but brings Mick to help him. Mick
explains that he would let Davies stay if he shows that he is a good interior decorator. When
he admit that he is not, he is thrown out. Davies turns to Aston for support unsuccessfully.
The main themes
power relations;
property, ownership, territoriality;
identity;
fraternal love;
isolation and miscommunication;

In the beginning the audience does not know how Mick is connected to the space he
appears in. Once Aston and Davies enter, one realizes that the old tramp depends on Astons
hospitality. This need for shelter places Davies in a subordinate position. The relationship
host-guest problematizes the rights of property. Actually, all the strategies that follow are
maneuvers having one aim: to establish territorial divisions. In Michael Billingtons study on
the play, the characters are presented as interlocked in a power struggle:
It is obviously a specific play about three individuals and about the idea of a room
as a temporary sanctuary from the outside world. But it is also a play about the
domestic nature of power and about the shifting alliances we form as part of our
survival tactic; and about the way we use language as a weapon of domination,
evasion or tactical negotiation. (117)
Discuss the theme of power in the play. Refer to relevant fragments in the
text.
2.3 The title and the characters in The Caretaker

The title
The word caretaker refers to the job that Aston envisages for the old man, when
suggesting that the latter could actually help with tidying up the place they find themselves
in. This way Aston is actually trying to share the responsibilities he received from his brother
who hoped that keeping busy might help Aston recover. At the same time Mick is a caretaker
in as much as he strives to take care of his brother who had some difficulties in the past and
seems to need support.
The characters
Davies is an old tramp, who does not have a stable job or address. He is anti-social,
this making him incapable of forming relationships with the people around him. He cannot
even respond appropriately to his benefactor, Aston, who offers him momentary safety. He is
resentful towards everyone and everything; he has difficulty in accepting his inferior position
and constantly tries to prove otherwise: Ive eaten my dinner off the best of plates (Pinter

207). However, Naismith considers that the old man is driven by a special life-force: This is
manifest in his verbal energy, his long speeches and in his physical reaction to any assault on
him (105).
Aston delivers a monologue, which reveals that he had been submitted to electric
shock treatment, a very traumatic experience whose consequences are that he cannot organize
his thoughts or talk to people. In the play he seems to have his heart set on building a shed in
the garden as a way to try to get over his former state. He seems genuinely sympathetic to
Davies predicament, trying to help the old man in various ways. However, in the end, he is
forced by Davies behavior to declare: I think its about time you found somewhere else. I
dont think were hitting it off (Pinter 266).
Mick is Astons younger brother, who never reveals the motifs of his actions. He is
probably concerned about Aston; he does not want to see Davies take advantage of his
hospitality, but he cannot simply attack the old tramp, since that would upset his brother:
He has the power to eject Davies, but that would alienate him from Aston, so he
acts to make Davies unpopular with Aston which he succeeds in doing. While
confusing and deceiving Davies during Acts Two and Three he is constantly
asking questions about Aston, which indicates the depth of his concern. (Naismith
110)
In interpretations critics and directors have provided, Davies has often been seen as a father
figure whose place is disrupted by his two sons. He seems to embody the tragic guilt of the
parent who never rises to the expectations of his child. The two sons have unrealistic wishes
that the father cannot fulfill. Thus the play ends in the fathers rejection along the pattern
established in Shakespeares King Lear. In a religious reading of the play, Davies is a Godfigure, who either interferes in a Cain-Abel feud, or who completes the trinity next to the Son
and the Holy Ghost (Rattigan quoted in Billington 122).
Discuss one of the three characters in the play, by referring to specific
scenes in the text.

Concluding
Remarks


In the essay Writing for the Theatre, Harold Pinter describes two types
of silence: One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a
torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a
language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we
hear is an indication of that which we dont hear (quoted in Knowles 77).
Taking into consideration this quotation, discuss the use of silence as a
technique in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter. Support your arguments
with examples. Start from Micks monologue at the beginning of act 2:
Mick: You remind me of my uncles brother. He was always on
the move, that man. Never without his passport. Had an eye for
the girls. Very much your build. Bit of an athlete. Long-jump
specialist. He had a habit of demonstrating different run-ups in the
drawing-room round about Christmas time. Had a penchant for
nuts. Nothing else but a penchant. Couldnt eat enough of them.
Peanuts, walnuts, brazil nuts, monkey nuts, wouldnt touch a piece
of fruit cake. Had a marvellous stop-watch. Picked it up in Hong
Kong. The day after they chucked him out of the Salvation Army.
Used to go in number four for Beckenham Reserves. That was
before he got his Gold Medal. Had a funny habit of carrying his
fiddle on his back. Like a papoose. I think there was a bit of the
Red Indian in him. To be honest, Ive never made out how he
came to be my uncles brother. Ive often thought that maybe it
was the other way round. I mean that my uncle was his brother
and he was my uncle. But I never called him uncle. As a matter of
fact I called him Sid. My mother called him Sid too. It was a
funny business. Your spitting image was. He ended up marrying a
Chinaman and went to Jamaica.
Pause.
I hope you slept well last night. (Pinter 229)

Answer 2.1
The absurdist elements in the play are explained in subchapter 2.1 and the
obligatory reading.
Answer 2.2
The theme of power in the play is presented in subchapter 2.2.
Answer 2.3
Both Davies and Aston can be discussed in connection to the opening of
act 1 (Pinter 205-207); both Davies and Mick can be discussed in
connection to the opening of act 2 (Pinter 228-231).
Bibliography Unit 2
Primary Source:
Pinter, Harold. The Caretaker. Landmarks of Modern British Drama.
The Plays of the Sixties. Eds. Roger Cornish and Violet Ketels.
London: Methuen Publishing, 1985. 201-276.
Secondary Sources:
Billington, Michael. Power Play. The Life and Work of Harold Pinter.
London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 114-130.
Cornish, Roger and Violet Ketels. Harold Pinter. Landmarks of Modern
British Drama. The Plays of the Sixties. Eds. Roger Cornish and
Violet Ketels. London: Methuen Publishing, 1985. 193-200.
Knowles, Ronald. Pinter and Twentieth-Century Drama. The Cambridge
Companion to Harold Pinter. Ed. Peter Raby. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001. 73-86.
Naismith, Bill. A Faber Critical Guide. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and
Faber, 2000.
Unit 3
Postmodernism: Tom Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Contents
Objectives Unit 3............................

3.1 To present Tom Stoppard in the context of postmodernism
3.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in
3.3 To analyze the title and the characters in
Page
000
OBJECTIVES Unit 3
To present Tom Stoppard in the context of postmodernism
To explore the structure and the main themes in
To analyze the title and the characters in
3.1 Tom Stoppard in the context of postmodernism
Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) was born in Czechoslovakia, but grew up in the
United Kingdom of Great Britain. His work in the early phase, the radio and TV
pieces, passed quite unremarked by the critics and did not leave room for suspecting
the popularity of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1964). This play turned
him into a celebrity overnight and both the audience and the critics greeted the
performance with praising words such as brilliant debutant and Boy Wonder of
British theatre. The play itself was considered an amazing piece of work and the
most important event in the British professional theatre in a long time (Billington
29). However, as the first echoes were fading away, academic criticism tended to see
not only the merits, but also the weaknesses of the play and to compare this success
with later works that deal with investigations of artistic conventions and cultural
assumptions such as Travesties (1974), in which the author theorizes about the
relationship between politics and art, The Real Thing (1982), in which he explores
human emotion and commitment in a romantic comedy, The Invention of Love (1997),
in which he represents the divided self of a famous scholar, A. E. Housman.
Although many of his plays have received awards in London and New York, his most
produced play of the 1990s is Arcadia (1993). The play is considered to represent
Stoppards view of life as a complex, dynamic interaction of randomness,
determinism and metaphysics (Fleming 2).
Stoppards work has been discussed in the context of postmodernism, defined
as the movement in which:
The search for unity has apparently been abandoned altogether. Instead we
have textuality, a cultivation of surfaces endlessly referring to, ricocheting
from, reverbarating onto other surfaces. The work calls attention to its
arbitrariness, constructedness; it interrupts itself. Instead of a single centre,
there is pastiche, cultural recombination ... Not only has the master voice
dissolved ... The implied subject is fragmented, unstable, even
decomposed; it is finally nothing more than a crosshatch of discourses.

(Gitlin quoted in Fleming 21)
Stoppards play does reveal such constructedness as the characters constantly point to
themselves as characters and actors on a stage, the audience being aware of their
avatars throughout the history of stagings of Hamlet, the famous Shakespearian
tragedy to which they initially belonged. The reception of the play is captured in a
nutshell as follows:
Tom Stoppards most reputed play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead (1967), has been analyzed as both drawing on Shakespeares Hamlet
by re-writing it from an intertextual, postmodernist perspective and
exploring the absurd in Becketts manner. Actually, the two views do not
exclude each other. Re-writing Hamlet in a twentieth-century, postwar
world from two minor characters point of view (Rosencrantz and
Guildensterns), using a mixture of colloquial and formal English, also
contains absurdist situations, so fashionable on the stage in those days in
the already celebrated manner of Ionesco, Beckett and Pinter. Stoppard
creates for the two minor characters an imaginary world interwoven with
the world of Shakespeares play, yet resonating of Samuel Becketts
seminal absurdist play Waiting for Godot. (Ciugureanu 147)
Establishing a relationship of intertextuality both with Shakespeares tragedy and
Becketts tragicomedy, Stoppards masterpiece is irreverent to both in a postmodernist
impulse of destabilizing authority and pointing to the multiplicity of centres and
voices that the twentieth century worldview increasingly recognizes. Stoppard clearly
departs from Hamlet, as it has been pointed out by various critics, among whom
Sanford Sternlicht:
Stoppard has deconstructed Hamlet. He has given us a vastly different
reading of Shakespeares play, one that says that chance, not fate, is the
determinant in the human experience. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
executed off stage in Stoppards play as in Shakespeares, but at the end of
Stoppards play our sympathies are with our peers, the poor students, and
not with the royals and their courtiers. (80)
At the same time studies that compare Stoppard to Beckett usually conclude by
underlining the differences, considered much more important than the similarities, and
by acknowledging the fact that Stoppard offers a parody of Beckett (Sales 139-149).
Discuss the reasons why Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead can be read as a postmodernist text.

Obligatory reading: Ciugureanu, Adina. The Anxiety of Choice:
Tom Stoppard. Post-War Anxieties. British Literature in the 1950s
and the 1960s. Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2006. 147-169.
3.2 The structure and the main themes in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The structure
At the beginning of the first act Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are on their way
to Elsinor at the request of the king, Claudius. They pass the time tossing coins, heads
coming up many times in a row. They meet a group of players and continue on their
way to the court. The king and queen instruct Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out
what bothers Hamlet. The two fail to see in the players rehearsal the fact that they will
be betrayed and executed.
The second act presents the meeting with Hamlet, in which the prince
outsmarts them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also fail to find Poloniuss body. In the
end, the king orders them to join Hamlet in his exile to England. Claudiuss letter to the
English king represents Hamlets death warrant.
In the third act Hamlet reads the letter and replaces the original with another
one in which the two attendant lords are supposed to be killed. During a pirate attack,
Hamlet flees and his friends find out about their being sentenced to death. They seem
resigned to their fate. The play ends when the English ambassadors inform Horatio that
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, the king and queen, Hamlet and Laertes also
having died.
The main themes
life as chance, rather than fate;
the nature of truth;
identity vs. role-playing;
friendship and betrayal;
the inevitability of death;

Discuss the theme of identity vs. role-playing. Refer to an
appropriate fragment in the text.
3.3 The title and the characters in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The title
Stoppard is not the first writer to be interested in Hamlets attendant lords. In the
nineteenth century Oscar Wilde noticed that they are immortal: They are what modern
life has contributed to the antique ideal of friendship They are types fixed for all
time (quoted in Billington 30-31). Another minor playwright of the same century, W.
S. Gilbert even wrote a play entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in which
Rosencrantz becomes Hamlets rival for Ophelia (Billington 31). However, the most
memorable literary reference to the enigmatic character of the attendant lord appears in
T. S. Eliots The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock:
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, not was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous
Almost, at times, the Fool. (17)
Stoppard first wrote a play entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear,
which was staged by an English amateur group of actors in Berlin (Billington 30). The
playwright revised this first engagement with Shakespeares characters and expanded it.
In 1966 it premiered as part of the Edinburgh Festival, and a year later in London.
The characters
Stoppard turns two secondary characters in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, into main characters, while Hamlet becomes a minor character. They
both seem somehow unprepared for what is in store as they are ordinary individuals

with human faults. Rosencrantz emerges as bewildered, supportive, while
Guildenstern appears as speculative, questioning, Socrates-quoting (Billington 32).
They do take part in important events, but are unable to control what is happening and
so their struggle is so far from monumental that they appear almost antlike in the world
of kings and princes an even performing artists (Sternlicht 81). When being
compared to Becketts protagonists, Rosencrantz is considered a counterpart of
Estragon, since they are both untouched by the past and concerned with the physical,
needing to be taken care by their partners, while Guildenstern is associated with
Vladimir, since they both have better memory, certain intellectual preoccupations and
the ability to take care of their companions (Sales 141).
The player and his troupe are the embodiment of the actors versatility in
interpreting many roles, and even of performing dying as a spectacle:
Death for all ages and occasions! Death by suspension, convulsion,
consumption, incision, execution, asphyxiation and malnutrition - ! Climactic
carnage, by poison and by steel - ! Double deaths by duel - ! Show!
(ALFRED, still in his queens costume, dies by poison: the PLAYER, with
rapier, kills the KING and duels with a fourth TRAGEDIAN, inflicting and
receiving a wound: the two remaining TRAGEDIANS, the two SPIES dressed
in the same coats as ROS and GUIL, are stabbed, as before.
Discuss at least two features of the protagonists, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, by referring to specific scenes in the text.

Concluding
Remarks
It is recommendable that you revise the main topics presented in

this unit and the objectives specified from the very beginning.
You should now take the Progress Test Unit 3, which should be
handed in to your instructor.

Explain how Stoppards characters relate to Claudius speech,
starting from two observations by Roger Sales: Clashes between
Elizabethan language and modern colloquialisms are a basic
ingredient in parodies of Shakespeare (29) and Claudiuss
measured, well-rounded public speech gets chopped up into ...
shorthand (30):
GUIL: We have been briefed. Hamlets transformation.
What do you recollect?
ROS: Well, hes changed, hasnt he? The exterior and
inward man fails to resemble
GUIL: Draw him on to pleasures glean what afflicts
him.
ROS: Something more than his fathers death
GUIL: Hes always talking about us there arent two
people living whim he dotes on more than us.
ROS: We cheer him up find out whats the matter
GUIL: Exactly, its a matter of asking the right questions
and giving away as little as we can. Its a game.
ROS: And then we can go?
GUIL: And receive such thanks as fits a kings
remembrance. (Stoppard 30-31)
Answer 3.1
The reasons why Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead can be read as a postmodernist text are given in subchapter
3.1 and the obligatory reading.
Answer 3.2
The theme of identity vs. role-playing can be discussed in
connection to the second part of act 1 (Stoppard 33-36).
Answer 3.3
The protagonists features:
Rosencrantz is oriented towards the physical, supportive,
dependent,
Guildenstern is oriented towards the intellect, speculative,

dependable.
To be discussed in connection to the opening of act 1 (Stoppard 914).
Bibliography Unit 3
Primary Source:
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. London:
Faber and Faber, 1988.
Secondary Sources:
Billington, Michael. Stoppard the Playwright. London and New
York: Methuen, 1987. 29-38.
Sales, Roger. Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
Dead. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.
Unit 4
The Feminine Perspective in Caryl Churchills Top Girls
Contents
Objectives Unit 4............................

4.1 To present Caryl Churchill in the context of British drama
4.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in Top Girls
4.3 To analyze the title and the characters in Top Girls
Page
000
OBJECTIVES Unit 4
To present Caryl Churchill in the context of British drama;

To explore the structure and the main themes in Top Girls;
To analyze the title and the characters in Top Girls.
4.1 Caryl Churchill in the context of British drama

Caryl Churchill was born in London in 1938, but raised in Montreal. She attended
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and obtained a BA in English in 1960. She started her career as a
playwright by writing radioplays in the 1960s and the 1970s. She had the chance to work
with the Royal Court Theatre, known for its openness to experimentation. In 1979 Cloud
Nine brought her success and recognition both in London and New York, the play winning
her first Obie Award. In 1982 Top Girls was staged at the Royal Court Theatre and was
directed by Max Stafford-Clark, becoming emblematic for the 1980s and being revived in the
1990s and even nowadays. In 1990 Mad Forest was written in connection to the Romanian
revolution.
Caryl Churchill is usually presented as a hugely respected and influential writer, an
incisive cultural commentator and a constant theatrical innovator (Lane 43). She is
appreciated for having managed to balance feminist politics and popular appeal (Tycer 3),
being discussed in connection to socialist feminism and the opposition against Thatcherism
(Aston 44). She is considered an innovator of style since she established the technique of
overlapping dialogue (Tycer 2). Among the influences upon her work one can mention
Bertolt Brecht, especially the alienation effect, i.e. the acting style where the actor avoids
becoming transformed into his or her character (Tycer 42).
Mention three characteristics of Caryl Churchills work in the context of
contemporary British drama and three plays she is known for.

4.2 The structure and the main themes in Top Girls
The structure
The play defies chronology, forcing the audience to be active, to piece together the
action.
The first act focuses on Marlenes celebration of her promotion as the managing
director of an employment agency. The persons invited to her dinner party are historical
figures or fictional characters. This dinner party is reminiscent of Judith Chicagos celebrated
feminist work (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/place_settings/)
The second act gives insight into the type of work that Marlene and her subordinates
do as scene 1 and 3 deal with the interview process in the case of three different applicants.
Scene 2 refers to Marlenes sister, Joyce, and her life in Suffolk as a member of the working
class; it also introduces Marlenes daughter, Angie, who has been brought up by Joyce as her
own daughter. Scene 3 is chronologically the ending of the play that captures Angies coming
to London to stay at her aunts and Marlenes doubts that the young girl has any chances to
make it in life.
The third act takes the audience back in time to events that took place a year earlier
when Marlene visited her sister and they had a fight about their life choices and political
attitudes that are at variance.
The main themes
inter- and intra-sexual oppression (Aston 39);
gender roles and the performance of them (Tycer 46);
the attack on the cult of the individual, in which any humane value is expendable in
the race for money (Sternlicht 102);
criticism of capitalist economy and patriarchy;
class and power struggles;
loss, especially the loss of ones child.
Critics of the play agree that the feminine perspective prevails. All the social and
political themes tackled are subsumed to those that concern women and their options, even if
a certain dimension of the play is critical of the extreme forms that feminism can embrace:
The centrality of women characters, the commentary on contemporary womens experience

in the work world, and the extended reference to heroic women of the past are all clearly
directed to an audience that is both sympathetic and conversant with feminist views (Brown
128-129).
Identify at least three themes in Top Girls and analyze them in connection
to the play.
4.2 The title and the characters in Top Girls

The title
The phrase top girls is critically used in the play, as Marlenes life and career based on
individualism are presented as devoid of feeling, connectedness to family and community,
friendship and real perspective. The top girls of the present, the women of the employment
agency, compete against each other and are harsh on the applicants who aspire to better jobs,
while the women in act 1 can be considered top girls of their respective eras. The word girls
in itself exposes a masculine way of conceptualizing the career woman while demeaning her
status through this term that refers to a juvenile condition not to be taken seriously. The
alternative title for the play Heroines would have lacked the ironic tinge (Tycer 45-6).
The characters
Marlene is a bussinesswoman who had embarked upon her career in London after
spending time in the U.S. Her working class background is left behind as she severs ties with
her family, including her daughter, Angie; she hasnt visited either her mother or sister in six
years. She does not have a stable relationship and blames mens incapacity to accept a career
woman.
Joyce supports herself and her niece by doing several cleaning jobs. She has been loyal
to her parents and her background and resents having had a miscarriage while taking care of
Angie. She opposes Marlene both personally since Marlene is the sister who has left her child
behind and politically since Marlene is the representative of a bourgeoisie that does not care
about the interests of the working class.

Angie, who is sixteen, has already left school and has no chance of succeeding beyond
the status of a packer in Tesco (Churchill 66). She is presented in opposition to her friend,
Kit, much younger, but with clear aspirations of pursuing her education. She has the cunning
to bring the two sisters, Marlene and Joyce, together and to run away to London in search of
her dreams embodied by Marlenes glamour. Sternlicht considers that her dream will not turn
into reality:
Her fate is sealed by her slow development and by the class into which she was
delivered by Marlene: the lack of education and the general indifference of the
capitalist society whose precepts her natural mother fervently embraces. Poor
Angie represents all the abandoned and damaged children in a capitalist world.
(101)
The five historical figures or fictional characters are Isabella Bird, Dull Gret, Pope
Joan, Lady Nijo and Griselda: These women share with each other the pain they had in
sacrificing their personal lives in order to obtain a significant place in an unforgiving
patriarchal society. They also suffered in various ways for defying male dominance and
societal expectation that they should aggrandize men (Sternlicht 100).
Isabella Bird is a Victorian traveller of Scottish origin whose adventures became
known through her travel writing. She refers to her sister who stayed back home, thus
following the proper role of women. Isabella never had children of her own, but engaged in
charitable work in Scotland.
Dull Gret has the lowest class background that keeps her silent through almost the
entire party. She comes from Breughels depiction of a peasant in armour fighting devils in
hell. When she does speak, she mentions the horrors of war and the death of two of her ten
children.
Pope Joan is a controversial mythical figure the woman who supposedly became
Pope in 854. Her rule and life ended when she gave birth to a child during a religious
procession; she was subsequently stoned to death.
Lady Nijo is a 13th century courtesan to the Emperor of Japan. She confesses having
beaten the emperor with sticks during a ritual in which this treatment was applied to women
at the court. As a result she was separated from her children and got to the point of feeling no
pain. When fallen in disgrace, she became an itinerant nun.
Griselda, a character in the Clerks Tale that is part of The Canterbury Tales by
Chaucer, explains that her faithfulness to her husband was put to the test by being forced to
renounce her children and even to return home to make room for another wife. In the end she
is reunited with her husband and children, but remains a model of obedience and patience.

The office ladies, Win and Nell, are envious of Marlenes promotion. They are
constantly on the lookout for a better paid job with rival companies. Involved in affairs with
married men, they have no stability in their lives. They are not sympathetic or supportive of
the applicants since they order them around and offer them badly-paid jobs; hence the theme
of intra-sexual oppresion. They are presented in opposition to Mrs. Kidd who dedicated her
life to her husband.
The applicants, Jeanine, Louise and Shona, phantasize about achieving independence
(jobs that provide mobility and high salaries). However, in the end they settle for suggestions
from the employment agency that are not what they wanted.
Choose one of the five historical figures or fictional characters at the
dinner party and explain how she defied the patriarchal order of her time.
Refer to relevant fragments in the play.

Concluding
Remarks

Discuss the following topics by referring to relevant passages in the play:
To what extent are Churchills characters top girls?
Churchill configures the confrontation between the two sisters,
Marlene and Joyce, throughout the play. Explain how this is
achieved. Refer to the folowing dialogue between the two:
MARLENE: You could have left.
JOYCE: Who says I wanted to leave?
MARLENE: Stop getting at me then, youre really boring.
JOYCE: How could I have left?
MARLENE: Did you want to?
JOYCE: I said, how, / how could I?

MARLENE: if youd wanted to youd have done it.
JOYCE: Christ.
(Churchill 76)
Agree or disagree with the following consideration:
The narrative threads of the dinner party conversation are
significantly marked by a discourse of intersexual oppression as
the women share their experiences of being daughters, wives,
mistresses and mothers. Their dialogue records both patriarchal
oppression and the desire to move beyond the conventional gender
divide (Aston 39)
Answer 4.1
Three characteristics of Caryl Churchills work in the context of
contemporary British drama:
theatrical innovator; e.g. the technique of overlapping dialogue;
representative of socialist feminism;
cultural commentator; e.g. opposition to Thatcherism;
Three plays she is known for: Cloud Nine (1979 ); Top Girls (1982); Mad
Forest (1990)
Answer 4.2
Three important themes in Top Girls are:
inter- and intra-sexual oppression;
performing gender roles;
criticism of patriarchy.
Answer 4.3
Students can opt for any of the five characters at the dinner party presented
in subchapter 4.3.

Bibliography Unit 4
Primary Source:
Churchill, Caryl. Top Girls. London: Methuen, 2008.
Secondary Sources:
Aston, Elaine. Us and Them: Top Girls. Caryl Churchill. Plymouth:
Northcote House, 1997. 38-45.
Brown, Janet. Caryl Churchills Top Girls Catches the Next Wave.
Caryl Churchill: A Casebook. Ed. Phyllis R. Randall. New York;
London: Garland Pub, 1988. 117-130.
Tycer. Alicia. Caryl Churchills Top Girls. London and New York:
Continuum, 2008.
Unit 5
Irish Identity Issues in Brian Friels Translations
Contents
Objectives Unit 5............................

5.1 To present Brian Friel in the context of Irish drama
5.2 To explore the structure and the main themes in Translations
5.3 To analyze the title and the characters in Translations
Page
000
OBJECTIVES Unit 5
To present Brian Friel in the context of Irish drama

To explore the structure and the main themes in Translations
To analyze the title and the characters in Translations
5.1 Brian Friel in the context of Irish drama

Brian Friel (b. 1929) represents a major voice in Irish drama. Born in County
Tyrone, he received his B.A. degree from St. Patricks College, Maynooth. He worked as a
schoolteacher before he devoted his whole time to writing in 1960. He is known for having
founded the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980, together with Stephen Rea. He received
critical acclaim and many awards for his plays, among which the most important ones are:
Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1965), presenting a young man torn apart by the various forces
in his life, Faith Healer (1979), taking place in the same invented village of Baile Beag, and
Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), looking at the ways in which an ancient Irish festival of music
and dance is reflected in the lives of five sisters. When capturing the significance of all his
works, a critic convincingly says: Friels plays inter-relate in patterns which tell not only the
story of Ireland and her wounds but also the timeless story of human longing for completion,
forgiveness, and love (Murray 239).
As far as Translations (1980) is concerned, it is agreed that it has relevance for the
most debated Irish issues in history. Robert Skloot considers that the play represents a
wonderful example of how a playwright can take a political issue and dramatize it for
maximum theatrical effect (816), while Sanford Sternlicht confirms that it is one of the
most important Irish political plays ever written (86). The play is set in 1833, at a time when
the English government was strengthening its domination of Ireland through various
measures. The plot focuses on the moment when several English officers and their
subordinates are sent to remap a small rural area, finding new English placenames for the
geographic formations there, or else to take each of the Gaelic names every hill, stream,
rock, even every patch of ground which possessed its own distinctive Irish name and
Anglicize it, either by changing it into its approximate English sound or by translating it into
English words (Friel 409). The local community is represented in the play by the master of a
hedge-school held in a barn and his students who study the basics of Latin, Greek and
mathematics in the evenings, in return for a small payment. At the time, hedge-schools

offered instruction to Catholics in Irish villages, after the Penal Laws deprived of them of
certain rights:
This situation was about to change in the 1830s as the British government sought
to replace such schools with National Schools, which would use English rather
than Irish as the medium of instruction. Thus the plays hedge-school is a
threatened space as confirmed indirectly by the schoolmasters insistence on
teaching his students Latin and Greek, encouraging a cross-cultural conversation
exclusively with dead civilizations. (Pelletier 67)
The interactions between the two groups stand for the Irish-English confrontations that go
beyond the boundaries of the nineteenth century. They certainly have relevance for the
twentieth century Irish Troubles that started in 1968 with demonstrations for civil rights. The
two opposing sections clashing on the territory of Northern Ireland were: the nationalists who
wanted Ulster to join the Republic of Ireland and the loyalists who wanted the region to
remain part of the United Kingdom. Given the political strife, the violence and the breakdown
that occurred at all levels, artistic works appearing at the time were bound to be politicized.
Explain why Brian Friels Translations is representative for Irish drama.
5.2 The structure and the main themes in Translations

The structure
The play is divided into three acts, the second act being the only one which is further
divided into two scenes.The first act acquaints the audience with the local masters and
students, their debates and ordinary life issues. By the end of the act Owen, the figure of the
prodigal son, also makes an appearance along with the two English officers. In the second
act Owen and Yolland are shown working on translating the Irish placenames in the area.
This process is interrupted by Maire, who wants to get to know the English visitor, and in the
second scene, the two of them share their attraction for each other beyond language. The last
act provides the culmination and sad denouement of the play caused by cultural
misunderstandings.

The main themes
the relationship between language and identity;
cultural / linguistic dispossession;
the colonizer vs. the colonized;
the trauma of cultural assimilation;
cartography;
education as (de)colonizing impulse.

The very specificity of its concentrating on the status of the Irish language in
nineteenth century Ireland under English rule opens up the play to universal relevance. By
discussing the problem of language preservation and the need to fight language dispossession,
the text and its performance have been valued by people everywhere, especially in territories
where cultural and language controversies are alive. The use of language is characteristic of
all humans, even though different peoples use distinct languages, as Alan Peacock details:
Translations makes words, language its central metaphor, and hence the
generalising power of its implications: it is drawing upon a system of signs and
symbols central to all human experience normative in the structures of their
usage and yet manifested everywhere with the same domestic, parochial focus as
in the townland of Ballybeg. (122)
Identify at least three themes in Translations and analyze them in
connection to the play.
5.3 The title and the characters in Translations

The title
Translations represents a very interesting case of translation, since very little is
actually translated in the play besides certain placenames, which are distortively reinvented.
The characters on stage are supposed to be speaking both Irish and English, but the only
language the audience hears is English. Refering to this as the playwrights stroke of genius,

Martine Pelletier explains:
Since the focus of the play is very much on language, its role in shaping and
expressing personal and collective identity, the very fact that English onstage
represents two separate languages the Irish we are asked to imagine and the
English which is now the natural vehicle for a play on an Irish stage is
immensely ironic and hugely significant. (68)
As a matter of fact, Friel problematizes his and other writers challenge of having to refer to
an Irish past and identity in English, the language that has triumphed in Ireland as a result of
colonialization. This is why his play is emblematic for post-colonial efforts of facing and
solving cultural dilemmas.
The characters
Hugh ODonnell, the hedge-school master, has a certain authority in the community
due to his knowledge of classical languages. He also knows English, but he does not get
involved in dispelling translation problems faced by the others. He has two sons. Manus is
the elder brother, who is pale-faced, lightly built, intense, and works as an unpaid assistant
a monitor to his father (Friel 383). His insecurity is caused by his physical impairment. He
is dedicated both to his teaching and to Maire, the object of his romantic interest. Owen, on
the other hand, is the embodiment of the son who went out into the world and made it. He
returns home as the English invaders translator and does his best to live up to his position as
go-between.
Maire is a local young woman who wants to learn English: I want to be able to
speak English because I am going to America as soon as the harvests all saved (Friel 400).
She falls in love with one of the English visitors, partly because she likes the sound of the
language he is speaking and partly because he represents her chance to get away from her
native village.
Lieutenant Yolland is the Englishman who shows a naive enthusiasm for all things
Irish and clearly has a romantic temperament and a certain sensitivity (Pelletier 67). He falls
in love with Maire, despite the language barrier. He is presented in contrast to Captain
Lancey, who is a stereotypical member of the British army, focusing on completing his
mission with professionalism and no sympathy or understanding for the local situation. The
use of their rank and last name in the play points to the fact that they have an official capacity
in the region and in a way, distances them from the locals whose first name is given from the
very beginning.
Sarah, Jimmy Jack, Doalty and Bridget are students at the hedge-school with

greater or lesser roles in the development of the events. Even though a minor character, Sarah
has been symbolically interpreted as representing Ireland, struck dumb through fear and the
imposition of English (Pelletier 68).
Choose either Manus and Owen and characterize him, explaining the
characters (lack of) allegiance to family, community and nation.

Concluding
Remarks

Discuss the ways in which Brian Friels Translations captures the key
transitional moment when Irish gave way to English, when a culture was
forced to translate itself into a different linguistic landscape (Pelletier 68),
by focusing on the relationship between language and identity. Start from
the following scene in the play:
OWEN: Were making a six-inch map of the country. Is there
something sinister in that?
YOLLAND: Not in
OWEN: And were taking place-names that are riddled with
confusion and YOLLAND: Whos confused? Are the people confused?
OWEN: - and were standardizing those names as accurately and
as sensibly as we can.
YOLLAND: Something is being eroded.
OWEN: Back to the romance again. All right! Fine! Fine! Look
where weve got to. (He drops on his hands and knees and stabs
a finger on the map.) Weve come to this crossroads. Come here
and look at it, man! Look at it! And we call that crossroads
Tobair Vree. And why do we call it Tobair Vree? Ill tell you

why. Tobair means a well. But what does Vree mean? Its a
corruption of Brian (Gaelic pronunciation). Brian an erosion
of Tobair Bhriain. Because a hundred and fifty years ago there
used to be a well there, not at the crossroads, mind you that
would be too simple but in a field close to the crossroads. And
an old man called Brian, whose face was disfigured by an
enormous growth, got it into his head that the water in the well
was blessed; and every day for seven months he went there and
bathed his face in it. But the growth didnt go away; and one
morning Brian was found drowned in that well. And ever since
that crossroads is known as Tobair Vree even though that well
has long since dried up. I know the story because my grandfather
told it to me. But ask Doalty or Maire or Bridget even my
father even Manus why its called Tobair Vree; and do you
think theyll know? I know they dont know. So the question I
put to you, Lieutenant is this: What do we do with a name like
that? Do we scrap Tobair Vree altogether and call it what?
The Cross? Crossroads? Or do we keep piety with a man long
dead, long forgotten, his name eroded beyond recognition,
whose trivial little story nobody in the parish remembers? (Friel
420)
Answer 5.1
The explanation is given in subchapter 5.1.
Answer 5.2
Three important themes in Translations are:
linguistic dispossession;
the colonizer vs. the colonized;
education.
Answer 5.3
Both Manus and Owen are discussed in subchapter 5.3.
Bibliography Unit 5
Primary Source:
Friel, Brian. Translations. Plays One. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.
377-451.
Secondary Sources:
Murray, Christopher. Friel, Brian (Bernard Patrick Friel). Contemporary
British Dramatists. Ed. K.A. Berney. London: St. James Press,
1994. 235- 239.
Peacock, Alan.
Translating the Past: Friel, Greece and Rome. The
Achievement of Brian Friel. Ed. Alan J. Peacock. Gerrards

Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. 113-133.
Pelletier, Martine. Translations, the Field Day and the Re-imagining of
Irish Identity. The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel. Ed.
Anthony Roche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
66-77.
Skloot, Robert. Translations by Brian Friel. Contemporary British
Dramatists. Ed. K.A. Berney. London: St. James Press, 1994.
816-818.
Unit 6
Contemporary British Poetry: Ted Hughes
Contents
Objectives Unit 6............................

6.1 To present Ted Hughes in the context of contemporary British poetry
6.2 To explore the main themes in Ted Hughess poetry
6.3 To analyze Ted Hughess ars poetica
Page
000
OBJECTIVES Unit 6
To present Ted Hughes in the context of contemporary British

poetry
To explore the main themes in Ted Hughess poetry
To analyze Ted Hughess ars poetica
6.1 Ted Hughes in the context of contemporary British poetry

Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire and studied at Cambridge. His
marriage to the American poet Sylvia Plath represents a biographical aspect much discussed
since she committed suicide in 1963. He reflected on her portrait and life in Birthday Letters
(1998), one of his last publications. In 1984 he was appointed Poet Laureate, a prestigious
form of recognition for literary merit in Britain. His first two volumes of poems, The Hawk in
the Rain (1957) and Lupercal (1960), concentrated on physical vividness of a minetic sort,
in a turbulent world of predatory animals, primitive violence and moments of extreme human
endurance a bloody world ruled by impulse and instinct (Thwaite 56). These volumes
established the prevailing note of his subsequent writings. The volume Crow (1970) is
considered an important landmark in Hughess poetry, since he introduces a combination of
myths to create Crow, a complex trickster figure. As complex knot of meanings, a trickster
figure always interests people with a background in anthropology; they see the trickster in
terms of binary opposites and describe it as creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who
dupes others and who is always duped himself (Radin xxiii). In the case of Hughess
volume, the ultimate purpose of the poetic endevour is to expose the grotesque and cruel
dimensions of the world:
Crow basically has two characters Crow himself and God. Crow is resilient,
resourceful, evasive, built to survive every kind of disaster: he is a protean figure,
but these are his irreductible characteristics. God is sometimes his partner,
sometimes his adversary or rival, often a passive presence who goes on sleeping
while Crow gets up to his gruesome tricks. (Thwaite 58)
As a matter of fact the Crow poems present Hughess own cosmogony and his views of major
religious issues that he feels compelled to tackle with a certain degree of sarcasm. Even if
some readers might object to his description of harsh realities with no trace of redemption,
they will still be impressed by the poets inventiveness and skill, rarely equalled before.
When discussing Hughes in relation to nineteenth century poetry, critics emphasize both the
elements he takes over and those he delimits himself from:

Like the Romantics, Hughes sees the natural objects and phenomena as
component parts of an organism, of an indivisible whole led by energetic
principles. But unlike the Romantics, Hughes describes this world as being
governed by the brutal Darwinian laws of survival in which the stronger devour
the weaker. (Ciugureanu 172)
Mention three volumes of poems Ted Hughes is celebrated for.
6.2 The main themes in Ted Hughess poetry

-
violence, ferocity, aggressiveness;
the energies of nature;
survival vs. death;
the grotesque dimension of existence.
Hughess poetry encompasses considerations on the violence, ferocity and

aggressiveness in the world in texts that present the diversity in nature: the animal and plant
world. His poems are accessible to the reader due to their narrative aspect, but at the same
time they occassion further meditation on the laws of life and death. As David Perkins
explained, Hughess method is also closely linked to the apparent easiness with which he
writes and publishes:
Hughess fluent productivity is partly to be explained by his creative method. His
poems take their initiative from a concrete subject an image, character, or action
which is developed until the poem stands complete. Usually his poems tell a
story or have narrative elements. (154)
Pike is one of the emblematic poems in which the first impression is that of mere
evocation of the image of the pike. However, as the reader advances with the reading of the
text, he discovers that it is more about destructiveness than anything else. The contained
space of the fish tank (Three we kept behind glass) and the sensation of order and safety
seem to be exploded by the uncontrollable nature of the pikes cannibalism (Suddenly there
were two. Finally one):

Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
..
Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them
Suddenly there were two. Finally one
With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long,
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb
One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death. (Hughes 41)
Dennis Walder makes the following illuminating comments:
By contrast with the brevity and even violence with which we are encouraged to
utter Pike, parts, egg, grin, the drawn out tigering and malevolent
encourage us to linger over their implications, so that the fishs dance becomes a
macabre celebration of timeless, instinctive destructiveness. And this effect
continues throughout the poem, evoking sharp impressions of the immediate
impact of the creature, yet at the same time stirring up strange, atavistic memories
of the primitive horrors which rise towards the surface of consciousness in the
narrator. (14)
Analyze the main themes in one of Ted Hughess poems that impressed
you. Rely on:
Ciugureanu, Adina. The Anxiety of Loss and the Will to Survive: Ted
Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Post-War Anxieties. British Literature in
the 1950s and the 1960s. Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2006. 171-198.

6.3 Ted Hughess ars poetica
Ted Hughess poem The Thought-Fox, the first poem in the volume Hawk in the
Rain, is much more than a memory or a description of a fox. The poem is often read as a text
in which the poet expresses his artistic creed.
I imagine this midnight moments forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clocks loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A foxs nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed. (Hughes 3)
Through the use of a structuring methaphor, Hughes invites the reader to witness the creative
process which results in the actual production of a poem: the neat prints of the foxs paws
have become the letters and words describing them (Walder 6). The poet also discloses the
fact that writing is a solitary experience that does not emerge from copying reality, but rather
from filtering it through the creative consciousness and enriching it with the power of ones
memory, imagination and inspiration.

Analyze the poem that can be interpreted as Hughess ars poetica.

Concluding
Remarks

Analyze the trickster figure in Crows First Lesson:
God tried to teach Crow how to talk.
Love, said God. Say, Love.
Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea
And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth.
No, no, said God, Say Love. Now try it. L O V E.
Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito
Zoomed out and down
To their sundry flesh-pots.
A final try, said God. Now, L O V E.
Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and
Mans bodiless prodigious head
Bulbed out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,
Jabbering protest
And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.
And womans vulva dropped over mans neck and tightened.
The two struggled together on the grass.
God struggled to part them, cursed, wept
Crow flew guiltily off. (Hughes 92)
Take into consideration the following quote:
Crow is the Survivor; though he is frightened, stunned, scorched,
chopped to pieces, and hung up by one claw; he is never killed,
and he embodies tough qualities that enable life to persist. These

are not lovable; they include egoism, suspicious alertness,
aggressive violence, limited imagination, insensitivity, and lowminded practicality. (Perkins 457)

Answer 6.1
Three volumes that Ted Hughes is known for:
The Hawk in the Rain (1957)
Lupercal (1960)
Crow (1970)
Answer 6.2
The poem analyzed in subchapter 6.2 can be chosen for analysis.
Answer 6.3
The Thought-Fox is discussed in subchapter 6.3. and the obligatory
reading chapter assigned (Ciugureanu 176).
Bibliography Unit 6
Primary Source:
Hughes, Ted. New Selected Poems 1957-1994. London: Faber and Faber,
1995.
Secondary Sources:
Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry. Modernism and After.
Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press,
1987.
Thwaite, Anthony. A Critical Guide to British Poetry 1960-1984. London
and New York: Longman, 1985.
Walder, Dennis. A Most Surprising First Book. Ted Hughes. Milton
Keynes, England: Open University Press, 1987. 4-15.
Unit 7
Contemporary Irish Poetry: Seamus Heaney
Contents
Objectives Unit 7............................

7.1 To present Seamus Heaney in the context of contemporary poetry in English
7.2 To explore the main themes in Seamus Heaneys poetry
Page
000
OBJECTIVES Unit 7
To present Seamus Heaney in the context of contemporary poetry in

English
To explore the main themes in Seamus Heaneys poetry
To analyze Seamus Heaneys ars poetica
7.1 Seamus Heaney in the context of contemporary poetry in English

Born in rural Northern Ireland in 1939, Seamus Heaney grew up to attend Queens
University, Belfast from where he graduated with a first class degree in English Language
and Literature. At the beginning of the 1960s, he attended Philip Hobsbaums Belfast Group.
Death of a Naturalist (1966) projected him to an international career. In 1970 he accepted to
teach as guest lecturer at University of California, Berkeley for a year, then he came back to
Ireland and chose to live in the Republic. In the 1980s he became a professor at Harvard and,
later on, at Oxford.
Owing to his strong connections to the academic world, Heaney signs criticism as well
as other essays on rhetoric and literature. He develops a unique stance in his articles and
lectures collected in Preoccupations (1980), The Government of the Tongue (1988) and The
Redress of Poetry (1995).
Among his most significant volumes of poetry one could
enumerate: North (1975), Station Island (1984), Seeing Things (1991). Along the years his
writing has been awarded important prizes, among which the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1995. His books have also become very popular with a wide international readership.
Heaneys work has been reviewed and analyzed on the one hand by Irish literature
historians such as Declan Kiberd and Seamus Deane in their attempt to reinvent Ireland and
define its cultural legacy, and on the other hand by British critics such as Blake Morrison and
Neil Corcoran in their book-length studies on the poet whom they recognized as a major
voice of his generation. Among the various critical approaches applied to his work, Henry
Harts psychoanalytical analysis in Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions (1992)
represents one of the most coherent and revealing endeavors as far as Heaneys critical
reception is concerned.

Mention the main critical approaches to Seamus Heaneys poetry.
Ciugureanu, Adina. The Anxiety of Loss and the Will to Survive: Ted
Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Post-War Anxieties. British Literature in
the 1950s and the 1960s. Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2006. 171-198.
7.2 The main themes in Seamus Heaneys poetry

-
national/cultural identity;
self-discovery;
the English/Irish double inheritance;
language;
history and myth;
aesthetics vs. ethics in poetry.
A writers battle with the already determined context in which he has to assert himself
is universal. With the Irish this battle has a special poignancy. Present research in the domain
of Irish Studies emphasizes the problem of identity for such writers as Swift, Goldsmith,
Sheridan, Shaw, Yeats or Beckett. All of Heaneys predecessors problematize language, two
memorable statements showing the way Irish writers relate to the English language, while
promoting their own cultural identity. Oscar Wilde said that The Saxons took our lands from
us and made them destitute but we took their language and added new beauties to it
(quoted in Kiberd 35), while James Joyce explained that The Irish, condemned to express
themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and
compete for glory with the civilized nations. The result is then called English literature
(quoted in Kiberd 35). Both point to the multiplicity of allegiances they struggled with in
their literary works.
In his writing poems about certain Irish placenames, Heaney demonstrates the tensions
at the heart of the EnglishIrish double inheritance by encoding in verse the universality of
the first and the locality of the second. Educated in the language of Shakespeare and the
Romantics, the poet cannot but recognize the formative influence English has upon his art,

however he feels strongly connected to his Irish heritage as well. Heaney expresses this idea
talking about his etymological poems in an interview with Seamus Deane:
I had a great sense of release as they were being written, a joy and devil-maycareness, and that convinced me that one could be faithful to the nature of the
English language for in some senses these poems are erotic mouth-music by and
out of the Anglo-Saxon tongue and, at the same time, be faithful to ones own
non-English origin for me that is County Derry. (quoted in ODonoghue 61)
In English the poet expresses himself, but it is in Irish that he listens to his native lands. What
is the poets true idiom then? A poem like Anahorish tackles the issue by situating the
speaker in a privileged relationship with the placename invoked as its title. Both the English
reader, for whom the translation is given in the very first line: place of clear water, and the
Irish-speaking one, for whom this information is redundant (although important in its
translatability), cannot relate to the name in terms of my place. Music and immediately
accessible meaning pass on to the reader so that the latter can appreciate them. But there
remain unrecoverable nuances that only the ear in the poem can hear:
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,
after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings. (Wintering Out 6)
A whole personal history hides under the surface of one name. The memory that encapsulates
the mount-dwellers and their lamps does not belong only to the speaker. That remembered
image connected with Anahorish projects in a larger context since the adverbial phrase and
the tense of the verb imply repetition, atemporality. The writing of the poem is imposed by
the need to be faithful to ones own sense of place and to that of the community.
The debate whether the poem provides an image of the transcendental unity of the
subject, and correspondingly of history, exactly in so far as it is represented as a property
of the subject (Lloyd 100), as a critic has stated, or whether the subject addresses the
difference between present and past instances of the self, as we are tempted to consider here,
is less important. What occupies a front position is the stress on the tonality of the Irish
language. Technically designated as constitutive parts of the sound system of a language,
consonants and vowels acquire a material dimension by the side of such landscape
elements as gradient and meadow. The whole of the poem, although written in English,
centres on one Irish word that appears in the title and at the heart of the poem. Anahorish
bears the cipher of the land as well as rich emotional inflections.
Other places are significant for Heaneys poetry as well, among which Jutland in

Denmark appearing in several poems that constitute the first part of the volume North and are
known by the name of bog poems: Bog Queen, Strange Fruit, Kinship, The Grauballe
Man, Punishment. The poem The Tolland Man included in Wintering Out announces the
theme and the technique underlying these pieces among which Punishment has a special
relevance for the question of identity.
In all of them Heaney draws upon the work of a Danish archaeologist P.V. Glob, who
wrote a book about prehistoric bodies preserved for many hundreds of years and unearthed
from the Northern lands in the 1950s. The Bog People provides anthropological data and
visual support inspiring for the poet who relates not only to the corpses, but also to those
foreign places.
In The Tollund Man the speaker has access to that world only through
representation. However, the contact is intimate. From the very first line: Some day Ill go to
Aarhus (Wintering Out 36) to the last stanza Out there in Jutland / In the old man-killing
parishes / I will feel lost, / Unhappy and at home (Wintering Out 37), a sense of belonging
with the natives of that land creeps in. In the first part of poem, a description of the unearthed
man is a poetic translation of self-discovery. All the details build around one verse:
Bridegroom to the goddess. The goddess is Nerthus, an earth deity similar to Demeter in
the Greek mysteries at Eleusis. She promised abundant crops in return to sacrifice. The
bridegroom is the hanged young man out of the bog. Through an intricate play of references,
the phrase could send as well to the person who perceives the picture i.e. the speaker in the
poem.
The ambiguity is necessary for the second part to develop. The I, a voice belonging
to the Irish present, asks the land to preserve the bodies of some men slaughtered by an
opposing group. Such a prayer could come only from a bride-groom connected invisibly to
the feminine land spirit. He believes in redemptive prehistoric powers and at the same time
admits to his Christianity:
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards. (Wintering Out 37)
The superimposed Catholic consciousness checks the identification with the pagan lore. But

then, what lies at the core of contemporary killing in Northern Ireland if not paganism? The
answer is never a resolution but a step further into questioning.
The third part of the poem presents the uneasiness the visitor will feel in the newly
found home. In the projected journey to Aarhus uttering names of places without knowing the
local tongue is only a tourist fallacy from the speakers perspective. He feels justified in his
love for anothers land. In fact, he is projected in a position imagined earlier for the non-Irish
speaker. He reenacts the foreigners difficulty to pronounce Irish placenames already stressed
somewhere else in the volume.
When the volume North appeared, Heaneys critics looked at the way history was
transformed into myth. Seamus Deane, for example, refers to the poets transmuting all into
a marriage myth of ground and victim, old sacrifice, and fresh murder (179). As shown in
the case of The Tollund Man, the remark may be accurate, but it leads to accusations of the
poems from socially oriented critics. Declan Kiberd talks about a seductive aestheticization
that distances the reader from contemporary violence (594), while David Lloyd thinks these
productions unpleasant, because the contradictions between the ethical and aesthetic
elements are resolved by subjugation of the former to the latter (106). It can be argued that
such insights are valuable not in their negative evaluations, but in their reconsideration of
Heaney as myth-maker. Iron Age fertility rituals with their sacred justification for sacrifice
represent original myth. What Heaney does in his poems is an interpretation of them. Remodeling is even more important for twentieth century consciousness than merely
reproducing.
In Punishment the underlying ritual is an Iron Age one: girls heads are shaved for
adultery and then the girls are drowned in a peat pit. Heaney portrays such a victim and draws
upon anatomical details: the nape of her neck, her naked front, her ribs, her nipples
(North 30). Looking at this remnant of an ancient culture, he interprets the mythical
inheritance. At the level of expression, he punishes himself in the present tense. His love for
the other is a hideous sin. The girl had been punished for love and adultery and scapegoated
by a community with strict laws: her noose a ring / to store / the memories of love. He
deserves to be punished for exposing her body in the act of writing despite his love for her: I
almost love you / but would have cast, I know, / the stones of silence. / I am the artful
voyeur (North 31). The verses remind one of Christs urge to him who is without sin to cast
the first stone on the adulteress in front of the crowd. The reference brings forth a Christian
dimension and opens up this level of significance.
In fact the speaker punishes himself for keeping silent about contemporary acts of

punishment. In recent times, Catholic girls from Northern Ireland are the bog girls sisters.
They are cauled in tar (North 31) for their loyalty to Protestant soldiers. To be a voyeur is
the only self-conceived role which the I-as-writer plays in the text. If writing does not expiate
the sinner in his own eyes, it does so in the reading a postmodern critic applies to the text.
The need to condemn sectarian violence openly is replaced by a subtler address of the
question of history.
The parallelisms between Jutland and Ireland, the Iron Age and the times of IRA, the
description of the girl in motion and the reference to her sisters constitute a montage and
not just mere allegory. In his analysis of one of the bog poems, Thomas Docherty comments
upon this cinematic technique as follows: Heaneys task in the text is to write in the
interstices of history itself, to be historical and to be aware of the flow and movement of
history, history as becoming even as he writes or because he writes the poem (72).
Heaneys merit, then, is that his intuition of a space organized primarily by temporal
determinations and not by spatial ones is harmonized with contemporary philosophical views
on these two fundamental categories: time and space.
Discuss the main themes in Anahorish / Tollund Man / Punishment.

Throughout his creation, different metaphors unveil Heaneys conception of poetry. He
exploits the etymology of the word while exploring both the technical and inspirational
aspects of it. The Greek word poiein meaning to make represents the basis for poiema
something made, created and poetes maker, creator (Cuddon 721). All of the
professions by which he refers to his own craft imply another element besides pure making. It
is the epiphany behind words all artists must benefit from in order to achieve a masterpiece.
From Death of a Naturalist (1966) with Churning Day and The Diviner to Wintering Out
(1972) with the Last Mummer the poet envisages different hypostases for himself that
explain and justify the word poet: butter-maker, diviner or mummer.

Read as an ars poetica, Churning Day which apparently deals only with the making
of butter, gives a thorough account of the making of poetry. Both processes are akin to the
alchemists task of turning matter into gold. The labourer in the poem has to make gold
flecks out of milk. The physical dimension is emphasized in images of utter concreteness:
Arms ached. / Hands blistered. Cheeks and clothes were spattered / with flabby milk
(Death of a Naturalist 9). All this is true for those who handle language and get physically
exhausted in working it. However, the final product, whether butter or poem, contains more
than the ingredients used to obtain the artefact. At the end of the churning day, the speaker
who voices the witnesses reactions and, through the extrapolation operated, the readers
reactions as well, acknowledges that invisible and hardly perceptible something:
The house would stink long after churning day,
acrid as a sulphur mine. The empty crocks
were ranged along the wall again, the butter
in soft printed slabs was piled on pantry shelves.
And in the house we moved with gravid ease,
Our brains turned crystals full of clean deal churns. (Death of a Naturalist 9).
Dwelling on the ambivalence of the word gravid which comes from the Latin gravis
heavy and gravidus pregnant, Henry Hart sees the ease that pervades the spirit as a
sense of grace, conjoined with a sense of gravity, of the heavy weight of the world that
submits to human shape only after strenuous labour (27). In this context the fact that the
butter-maker is a woman, the speakers mother, bears great significance. Metaphorically she
represents the poet whose pains in bringing a poem into the world are similar to those of a
woman giving birth to a baby.
The gendered viewpoint on the binary way in which a poem is written underlies the
complicity between the feminine and the masculine modes. The roles ascribed are
interchangeable, as the previous poem has shown. Although accused of a traditional approach
to gender, Heaney is correct when he emphasizes the counterparts traits of character and, in
the present reading, their contribution to the birth of a poem:
In the masculine mode, the language functions as a form of address, of assertion or
command, and the poetic effort has to do with the conscious quelling and control of
materials, a labour of shaping; words are athletic, capable, displaying the muscle of
sense. Whereas in the feminine mode the language functions more as evocation than
address, and the poetic effort is not so much a labour of design as it is an act of
divination and revelation; words in the feminine mode behave with the lovers comehither instead of the athletes display, they constitute a poetry that is delicious as
texture before it is recognized as architectonic. (Preoccupations 88)
The ars poetica The Diviner in the same volume belongs to the feminine mystery of poetry,

being closer to texture than to architecture. The acquisition of a profession cannot account by
itself for the revelatory moment when the hazel stick jerks in the hands of the water-diviner.
The last stanza brings forth a new aspect added to writing poetry: the power to make others
experience the ultimate finding. In his years of teaching poetry these first thoughts on the
possibility of learning the divine skill have been followed through:
The bystanders would ask to have a try.
He handed them the rod without a word.
It lay dead in their grasp till, nonchalantly,
He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred. (Death of a Naturalist 23)
Will philistines ever be drawn towards these dying jobs to which one has to dedicate his
entire self and a whole lifetime? Will they ever be capable of feeling what the master does
when he gets to the end of his task?
Memory is essential in the poem The Last Mummer. The title itself contains the
germs of the mumming plays extinction and of its survival only in the memory of the poet.
He is the instance that testifies to this dying traditional form of art. Death and resurrection are
also the themes of the mumming play, a primitive form of folk drama associated with
funeral rites and seasonal fertility rites, especially the spring festival (Cuddon 559). The last
actor, the only one to travel through the country presents a dismal sight in the absence of his
companions who would have embodied all of the ancient characters: St. George, Beelzebub,
Jack Straw.
This solitary wanderer is just a relic from the past who moves out of the fog / on the
lawn, pads up the terrace (Wintering Out 8). Yet without him the rituals of passage from the
old year into the new are not complete. He leaves dark traces on the path and so, only a
receptive eye can see the exterior manifestation of his silenced show. The whole ceremony
seems to have been internalized by performer and audience alike. The mummer as a poet
figure points to the new place art, be it drama or poetry, occupies in our times.
Analyze one of the poems that can be interpreted as Heaneys ars poetica.

Concluding
Remarks

Analyze the main themes in Seamus Heaneys Digging, the opening
poem in his first volume of poetry:
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toners bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But Ive no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
Ill dig with it. (1-2)

Answer 7.1
The main approaches
-
the perspective of Irish literature historians: Kiberd, Deane;
the perspective of English critics interested in a new poetic

generation Heaney represents: Morrison, Corcoran;
a psychoanalytical approach: Hart.
Answer 7.2
The themes in these texts are analyzed in subchapter 7.2.
Answer 7.3
The poems are analyzed in subchapter 7.3.
Bibliography Unit 7
Primary Sources:
Heaney, Seamus. Death of a Naturalist. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.
Heaney, Seamus. North. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.
Heaney, Seamus. Wintering Out. London: Faber and Faber, 1972.
Secondary Sources:
Heaney, Seamus. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 19681978. London:
Faber and Faber, 1980.
Lloyd, David. Pap for the Dispossessed: Seamus Heaney and thePoetics
of Identity. Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays Ed.
Elmer Andrews. London: Macmillan Press, 1997. 87 - 116.
Bibliography
DRAMA AND POETRY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources:
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. London: Faber and Faber, 1965.
Churchill, Caryl. Top Girls. London: Methuen, 2008.
Eliot, T.S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Collected Poems 1902-1962. London: Faber
and Faber, 1974. 13-17.
Friel, Brian. Translations. Plays One. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 377-451.
Heaney, Seamus. Death of a Naturalist. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.
Heaney, Seamus. North. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.
Heaney, Seamus. Wintering Out. London: Faber and Faber, 1972.
Hughes, Ted. New Selected Poems 1957-1994. London: Faber and Faber, 1995.
Pinter, Harold. The Caretaker. Landmarks of Modern British Drama. The Plays of the Sixties.
Eds. Roger Cornish and Violet Ketels. London: Methuen Publishing, 1985. 201-276.
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. London: Faber and Faber, 1988.
Secondary Sources:
Ciugureanu, Adina. Post-War Anxieties. British Literature in the 1950s and the 1960s.
Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2006.
Cuddon, J. A. Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literay Theory. Hardsmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1993.
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. The Tulane Drama Review 4.4 (1960): 3-15.
Heaney, Seamus. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 19681978. London: Faber and Faber, 1980.
Lane, David. Contemporary British Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010.
Ousby, Ian. The Wordsworth Companion to Literature in English. Hertfordshire, Wordsworth
Editions, 1995.
Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry. Modernism and After. Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London: The Belknap Press, 1987.
Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York: Schoken Books,
1972.
Bibliography
Sternlicht, Sanford V. Masterpieces of Modern British and Irish Drama. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood, 2005.
Thwaite, Anthony. A Critical Guide to British Poetry 1960-1984. London and New York:
Longman, 1985.
Works on Individual Authors
Samuel Beckett
Counsell, Colin. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth Century Theatre. London
and New York: Routledge, 1996. 112-142.
Kennedy, Andrew. Samuel Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 24-46.
Worton, Michael. Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text. The Cambridge
Companion to Beckett. Ed. John Pilling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995. 67-87.
Caryl Churchill
Aston, Elaine. Us and Them: Top Girls. Caryl Churchill. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1997.
38-45.
Brown, Janet. Caryl Churchills Top Girls Catches the Next Wave. Caryl Churchill: A
Casebook. Ed. Phyllis R. Randall. New York; London: Garland Pub, 1988. 117-130.
Tycer. Alicia. Caryl Churchills Top Girls. London and New York: Continuum, 2008.
Brian Friel
Murray, Christopher. Friel, Brian (Bernard Patrick Friel). Contemporary British Dramatists.
Ed. K.A. Berney. London: St. James Press, 1994. 235- 239.
Peacock, Alan. Translating the Past: Friel, Greece and Rome. The Achievement of Brian Friel.
Ed. Alan J. Peacock. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. 113-133.
Pelletier, Martine. Translations, the Field Day and the Re-imagining of Irish Identity. The
Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel. Ed. Anthony Roche. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004. 66-77.
Skloot, Robert. Translations by Brian Friel Contemporary British Dramatists. Ed. K.A.
Berney. London: St. James Press, 1994. 816-818.
Seamus Heaney
Corcoran, Neil, ed. A Students Guide to Seamus Heaney. London: Faber and Faber, 1986.
Deane, Seamus. Celtic Revivals. London: Faber and Faber, 1985.
Bibliography
Docherty, Thomas. Ana-; or Postmodernism, Landscape, Seamus Heaney. Contemporary
Poetry meets Modern Theory. Eds. Anthony Easthope and John Thompson.
Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. 68-80.
Hart, Henry. Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions. New York: Syracuse University
Press, 1992.
Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage
Random House, 1996.
Lloyd, David. Pap for the Dispossessed: Seamus Heaney and the Poetics of Identity. Seamus
Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays Ed. Elmer Andrews. London: Macmillan
Press, 1997. 87 -116.
Morrison, Blake. Seamus Heaney. London: Methuen, 1987.
ODonoghue, Bernard. Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry. Hertfordshire: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Ted Hughes
Walder, Dennis. A Most Surprising First Book. Ted Hughes. Milton Keynes, England: Open
University Press, 1987. 4-15.
Harold Pinter
Billington, Michael. Power Play. The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. London: Faber and
Faber, 1996. 114-130.
Cornish, Roger and Violet Ketels. Harold Pinter. Landmarks of Modern British Drama. The
Plays of the Sixties. Eds. Roger Cornish and Violet Ketels. London: Methuen
Publishing, 1985. 193-200.
Knowles, Ronald. Pinter and Twentieth-Century Drama. The Cambridge Companion to
Harold Pinter. Ed. Peter Raby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 7386.
Naismith, Bill. A Faber Critical Guide. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 2000.
Tom Stoppard
Billington, Michael. Stoppard the Playwright. London and New York: Methuen, 1987. 29-38.
Fleming, John. Tom Stoppards Arcadia. London and New York: Continuum, 2008.
Sales, Roger. Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1988.

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Universitatea OVIDIUS Constana

Instructor disciplin IFR:

The Theatre of the Absurd: Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot

Power Relations in Harold Pinters The Caretaker

Postmodernism: Tom Stoppards

The Feminine Perspective in Caryl Churchills Top Girls

Irish Identity Issues in Brian Friels Translations

Contemporary British Poetry: Ted Hughes

Contemporary Irish Poetry: Seamus Heaney

Observaie: numrul unitilor de nvare este egal cu numrul edinelor de curs

Continuing the study of Twentieth Century English Literature started in

Objectives Unit 1............................

To present Samuel Beckett in the context of the theatre of the absurd

1.1 Samuel Beckett in the context of the theatre of the absurd

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

The main themes

the search for identity;

time (exterior and interior);

memory and its failure;

friendship and its tensions;

the possibility of suicide;

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

1.3 The title and the characters in Waiting for Godot

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

We have reached the end of Unit 1.

Progress Test Unit 1

Objectives Unit 2 ............................

To present Harold Pinter in the context of the theatre of the absurd

2.1 Harold Pinter in the context of the theatre of the absurd

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

2.2 The structure and the main themes in The Caretaker

property, ownership, territoriality;

isolation and miscommunication;

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

2.3 The title and the characters in The Caretaker

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

We have reached the end of Unit 2.

Progress Test Unit 2

Objectives Unit 3............................

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

life as chance, rather than fate;

the nature of truth;

identity vs. role-playing;

friendship and betrayal;

the inevitability of death;

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

We have reached the end of Unit 3.

It is recommendable that you revise the main topics presented in

Objectives Unit 4............................

To present Caryl Churchill in the context of British drama;

4.1 Caryl Churchill in the context of British drama

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

The main themes

inter- and intra-sexual oppression (Aston 39);

gender roles and the performance of them (Tycer 46);

criticism of capitalist economy and patriarchy;

class and power struggles;

loss, especially the loss of ones child.

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

4.2 The title and the characters in Top Girls

Suggested answers can be found at the end of the unit.

We have reached the end of Unit 4.

Progress Test Unit 4