The End of the ‘Tinker’: Irish Writing after Traveller Politicization
The End of the ‘Tinker’: Irish Writing after Traveller Politicization
The fifth chapter traces the replacement of the ‘stage tinker’ by the more even-handed portrayals of Travellers in the work of politically sensitive dramatists Bryan MacMahon, Tom Murphy, and John Arden that emerged after the minority’s politicization in the 1960. In terms of Abbey Theatre tradition, these more nuanced portrayals are considered as the homecoming of the empathetic Syngean impulse to the National Theatre after decades of exclusionary depictions of farcical and threatening ‘tinkers‘. As a result, the floodgates were opened to the emergence of Traveller writers who challenged traditional representations of their community, and the discourse of exoticness to which the minority had been subject was thereby transformed into the empowering rhetoric of ethnic difference. The chapter concludes with a survey of the contention with normative values of Traveller oral literature, and the response to Synge of Traveller writers Juanita Casey and Rosaleen McDonagh.
Keywords: Traveller politicization, Bryan MacMahon, Tom Murphy, John Arden, Traveller writers, ethnic difference, oral literature, Juanita Casey, Rosaleen McDonagh
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