논문의 목적은 예이츠의 초기 글에서 예이츠의 문학에 대한 생각이 어떻게 발전되어 가고 있는지 살펴보는데 있다. 그 중에서도 글에서는 특히 사무엘 퍼거슨 및 클래런스 맨건과 같은 아일랜드 작가, 그리고 보다 전반적인 아일랜드 문학에 대한 바람과 우려에 대해 예이츠가 어떻게 논의하고 있는지에 대해 알아볼 것이다. 그러한 점에서, 이 논문에서는 선배 작가에 대한 예이츠의 글, 그리고 그가 아일랜드의 문학적 어젠다를 수립해 가는 과정에서 겪었던 문제에 대해 이야기 하는 과정에서 훗날 예이츠 자신의 시와 드라마가 나아갈 방향에 대한 단초를 제공하는지에 대해 논의하고자 한다.

서평

서평

Some critics have argued that William Butler Yeats and Irish Literary Revivalist defend nationalism in symbolic compensation in the form of mythologizing for the loss and trauma which result from the long history of the British colonial rule. Their focus has been the Celtic mythology and that of Mother Ireland. Other critics present their counter-argument by designating James Joyce as the precursor of the counter-movement which manifests the resistance against Yeatsian mythologizing among the exiled poets such as Beckett, Flann O’Brien, and Thomas MacGeevy, including Joyce. Establishing such polarity in the approaches to modern and contemporary Irish poetry in this way will produce a problematic logic which causes a secondary binary opposition between extreme nationalism and abstract cosmopolitanism. In attempts to avoid a futile reconciliation of the two arguments, one needs to redefine or deconstruct the master or grand narratives concerning myth, nation, and nationalism. Also, one might feel it necessary to provide a persuasive discussion of the interrelationship between myth and nationalism. Recent theorists such as Benedict Anderson, Lia Greenfield, Homi Bhabham, and Eric Hobsbawm have provided persuasive theories about nationalism and beyond-nationalism. Critics such as Tom Garvin, Desmond Fennell, Marianne Elliott, Roy Foster, Seamus Deane, Declan Kiberd, and Luke Gibbons have investigated the potential methodology to overcome the logic of binary opposition concerning Irish nationalism from the self-reflective perspective. The common ground of these critics and theorists is based upon the definition of nationalism in terms of what Benedict Anderson calls “imagined community” which is based upon the discursive anchors such as narrative, myth, and symbol. Irish national myth offers one of the most typical case study for this “imagined construction.” Using Richard Kearney’s term “post-nationalism,” the objective of this paper is to present a perspective of post-nationalism, and to demonstrate the polyphonic voices of modern and contemporary Irish poets, starting from Yeats and Joyce who have been approved among critics as the poets of the two mainstreams in 20th-century Irish poetry to those post-Yeatsian/Joycean poets such as Patrick Kavanagh, Austin Clarke, Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Mahon, to name a few. My anchors of discussion are mythologizing, demythologizing, and remythologizing.

This paper starts with the hypothesis that Irish literature should be different from English literature in theme, feeling and the technique of expression. The differences the writer has found so far are as follows: the search for the father-omphalos, the personification of nature, the recognition of sex as an origin of creation, the search for aesthetics of darkness, the attachment to silence, the spirit of wandering, the cyclic view of the world and dramatic self-awareness, etc. Since the end of the 19th century, the Irish writers’ strong attachment to their own tradition has been expressed as their reaction to a sense of lack as reflected in terms such as “center,” “omphalos,” and “search for father.” This phenomenon accounts for the birth of Irish national literature. From Oscar Wilde and Bernard Show in the 19th century to the recent poet, Seamus Heaney, they tried to deanglicize and create their own literature. But through this process, they have not neglected the chance to become a master of the international literature, by using the language of enemy. And each writer has a peculiar method of deanglicizing. For example, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Show who contributed to cosmopolitanism of modern Irish literature attacked and illuminated the English audiences by the reversing play-role. Understanding the enhanced nationalism, W.B. Yeats and other revivalists of Irish literature integrated English culture and tradition into the nationalistic movement. This is why their works were called “the cracked glass of the servants.” J. Joyce and other modernists, in a genuine sense, sought for their original nationality and to do this, they tried to recognize the picture of themselves as paralysis. From the establishment of the Irish Republic to the recent, strong nationalism and internationalism, as it has grown as one of the European countries, have been reconciled. Modern Irish literature has succeeded in regaining its own tradition and reaching top as one of the international literatures, getting through the five phases. During the first phase it showed the spirit to reverse the English cultural system and value by preempting the role of the English. The second phase is the period when they stimulated the national feeling and praised national heros. At the third phase modernists including Joyce, Kinsella, and Clarke attacked the nationalism of the second phase, saying that it was like a bubble full of the imagination the English wanted, and they exposed the realistic viewpoint of Irish life to their literary works. The fourth phase shows the reconciliation between parochialism of P. Kavanagh and cosmopolitanism of J. Montague. The fifth phase shows that with the enforcing of nationalism caused by the Ulster Trouble, harmony of nationalism and internationalism has been sought. The most important element that has led modern Irish literature to the top level is the spirit of omphalos through their confidence in their own culture and the sense of lack, and thereby the attachment to losses in language, land and tradition. Besides these, modern Irish writers haveoriented from the early period the Irish Republic towards an international country. The harmony of regionalism and cosmopolitanism, as well as that of individual interests and community interests, has led the Irish Republic to become one of the best postcolonial countries and cultural models.