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Brian Friel
 作者介紹
作品
作者介紹
Brian Friel born in Omagh in Co. Tyrone in 1929, is arguably the most prominent living Irish dramatist, successfully creating a series of internationally-known plays, including the ground-breaking Philadelphia, Here I come! (1964), Translations (1980), Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) among others.
In 1980, Brian Friel and Stephen Rea, a Belfast-born actor, established Field Day Theater Company in Derry. The mission of Field Day Theater Company seems to be an attempt to address the unsolved political dilemmas in Northern Ireland and thus to find a new way to look at the Troubles in Northern Ireland. As the first production of Field Day Theater Company, Translations, has a special place among Brian Friel's plays. Set in 1830s Irish hedge school, Translations provides a new way to look at the Irish political and economic climate before the Great Famine. The purpose of the British Ordnance Survey is a means to exploit the Irish: by enforcing taxation and political control. According to Suzy Clarkson Holstein, “Mapping any territory lays claim to it, stamps as one's own.” Friel laments the loss of Gaelic, but also considers the complex factors behind the loss of Gaelic. By juxtaposing hedge schools and national schools, Friel condemns the arrogance of the colonial authorities. In the play, Lancey, the representative of colonial authority, all languages are equally inferior and those who can't speak English are taken as savages.
Other than colonial practices, Friel pinpoints the economic factors behind the loss of Gaelic. In Translations, economic forces shape everyone's thinking. Friel's new insights to the loss of Gaelic is embodied in the hedge school master, Hugh. At the beginning, Hugh, the hedge school master, shares with traditional Nationalists a love and pride for his own language. Surprisingly, in later episode, Hugh shows an ability to adapt to the changes of the real world for the fact that a language “can happen that a civilization can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape…of fact” Compared to Jimmy, who has locked himself in the ancient culture and lost the distinction between reality and imagination, Hugh feels the pain of dispossession, but sees the ineluctable trend of modernization.
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作品
Brief Synopsis of Translations
Set in Baile Beag/Ballybeg, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal in 1833, Translations narrates two pivotal issues in Irish history: Ordnance Survey by Royal Engineers in Ireland and the replacement of the Irish hedge school by the national school system in English. The first Act begins with Manus' attempt to teach Sarah to speak her own name and the place where she lives, and simultaneously, with Jimmy Jack's ardent recitation of Homer's Odyssey in Greek and his admiration for the goddess Athene. Maire later enters and imparts that she is determined to emigrate to America to her lover, Manus. Doalty and Bridget rushes in to perform the activities of the sappers mapping the territory with the poles and modern equipments. Later on, the hedge-school master Hugh, Manus' father, enters drunkenly, and reveals his contempt for English as the language of commerce but culture in his description of his encounter with Captain Lancey, who is in charge with Ordnance Survey, but Hugh is then confronted by Maire, who is eager to learn English. Owen, Hugh's younger son, suddenly appears from Dublin, and introduces his friends Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland to everyone. He then performs the curtailed and distorted translation of Captain Lancey's announcement of the imperial intention of the cartography.
Act two begins with the cooperation of Yolland and Owen to translate or Anglicize the Irish place names for the new map. Yolland expresses his profound fascination with Irish language and culture and Ballybeg, which is Eden for him. Hugh later addresses several aphorisms to warn Yolland's romantic tendency to perceive the “rich” Irish language and culture embodied in Irish and classical literatures. Maire appears at the end of scene one to inform that there will be a dance tomorrow evening, and invites Yolland to the dance. Scene two represents a surprising but amorous love scene between Yolland and Maire after the dance and their arduous efforts to overcome the barrier of languages to communicate love eventually through the sounds of local Irish and British place names. Act three opens with the ominous atmosphere because Yolland mysteriously disappears after his meeting with Maire, and is supposed to be murdered. Captain Lancey issues the ultimatum to destroy the local community if Yolland will not to be found. Sarah loses her ability to speak again after the interrogation of Captain Lancey. Owen finally determines to join the bellicose combat against the British soldiers with Doalty and others. However, Hugh figures out that it is better to learn the new place names in order to make them their homes, promises the distressed Maire to teach her English, and ends the play with the recitation of Virgil's Aeneid, the epic of Carthage's destruction and Roman's triumph.
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