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CM Literature IRL
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CM Literature IRL S6 L3 LLCE English
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CM - TRANSLATIONSBRIAN FRIEL – TRANSLATIONS
The context in which the play was created was the Northern Ireland Travels. The
historical context of the play (the Penal Laws and the surveys especially) is
important. The play is about the visit of EN officers in charge of doing the ordnance
survey: it’s the drawing of a map. It’s based on real historical events.
Brian Friel was a Catholic from the North. He was born in 1929 and died in 2015.
It was the end of the war of Independence. The IR had fought for Home Rule. They
had obtained it in 1912. Home Rule was opposed by the Unionists (the Protestants).
They wanted at all cost to remain in the UK. It ended with the Anglo-IR Treaty in
1921. That treaty created not yet the Republic of IRL (1947) but the Free State of
IRL. It also created the province of Northern Ireland. It remained part of the
UK, which became the United Kingdom of GB and Northern IRL.
There was the need to draw a frontier, but it was not a geographical one.
Everything was made so as to secure
a Protestant majority in NIRL. If we
look at the map, we see that NIRL
contains only 6 counties. They
excluded Donegal.
After the creation of NIRL in 1921,
the Unionists and the Protestants
secured power in the province. For decades, they established a series of
discriminations against the Catholics in NIRL: in jobs mostly. When there was a
job opening and if a Catholic & a Protestant applied, the Protestant would always get
the job. It was also the case in housing. The vote was organized so that the
constituencies were divided again according to the number of Unionists inside,
so that Protestants will be better represented. It is called gerrymandering.
There was one city that was particularly involved in that: Derry. From the start, this
is a controversial city (founded by the Protestants who called it Londonderry). This
went on for decades, but in the 1960’s, there was a consequence of the Welfare
State in BR: it implied free access to third-level education (Uni). All BR laws applied
to NIRL. This meant that a new generation of Catholics had access to third-level
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, CM - TRANSLATIONS
education. They began to be better educated, to have degrees… But it was still
difficult for them to get a job.
Those people began to develop a political consciousness: that’s how they created the
NIRL Civil Rights Association (NICRA) on the modal of the Civil Right Movement
in the US. MLK believed in non-violence. So, NICRA asked for equal rights between C
and P in education, housing, jobs etc. and the end of gerrymandering. Instead of
being violent, they organized demonstrations and marches.
In Derry, they organized a huge demonstration in 1909. It was very violently
repressed by the police. Why? Because the police were exclusively composed of P. It
was called The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). They hated the C. So, they charged
them and there were a lot of people who were wounded. At the time, there were
journalists: they filmed the events, and this was released on TV. This triggered
riots all over the province.
P and C started to live in separate neighborhoods. The local government was
unable to cope, so London decided to introduce direct provision: a direct
government from the GB. And they sent the BR army. It was the beginning of 30
years of “the Troubles”. There was paramilitary organizations such as the IRA,
UDA (Ulster Defense Army) and UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force). There were
thousands of victims, hundreds of prisoners with outstanding episodes such as
Bloody Sunday. It lasted until 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement: they would
delete the frontier between IRL and NIRL.
The play is set in the quiet community of Baile Beag (later anglicized to Ballybeg), in
County Donegal, in 1833. Many of the inhabitants have little experience of the world
outside the village. In spite of this, tales about Greek goddesses are as commonplace
as those about the potato crops, and, in addition to Irish, Latin and Greek are
spoken in the local hedge school.
The master of the hedge school is called Hugh. He drinks a lot. His sons are called
Manus (he is disabled, he has a limp) who works with his father and Owen.
Contrary to Manus, he is returning from Dublin, and is educated etc. He returns with
two EN officers. Soon, Hugh and Manus discover that they do not call Owen Owen,
Rolland. So, Owen has accepted to have his name translated in EN, and to give up
his IR identity.
The students are not children, they are grown-ups and they pay Hugh some money
in order to receive an education. The second thing which is not common: they study
mostly Greek and Latin. The audience are confronted to the same problems as the
characters: what we are reading is a translation of Greek and Latin, but also IR.
All the characters are supposed to speak IR.
The audience was aware of that. The IR language had been lost so they would not
have understood. The play is in translation, about translation. Language is at the
center of the play and of the action.
Even in a lot of programs and laws etc. were set up in order to force people to go
back to the original language of IRL (IR), it failed. To a large extent, IR people speak
EN. Except in very limited areas in the country. It’s a device that Friel uses to make
us experiment what the loss of a language means. The play is, by essence, bilingual.
But in fact, it contains even more than 2 languages: 4. The action of the play is
located in a school: they study mostly Greek and Latin.
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