The Historical and Colonial Context of Brian Friel’s Translations Essay

The Historical and Colonial Context of Brian Friels TranslationsRegarded by many as Brian Friels theatrical masterpiece, Seamus Deane described Translations as a sequence of events in history which are transformed by his create verbally into a parable of events in the present day (Introduction 22). The function was branch produced in Derry in 1980. It was the first production by Field Day, a cultural arts group founded by Friel and the actor Stephen Rea, and associated with Deane, Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin.As Deane asserts, the play is in many respects an intelligent and enlightening allegory for the situation in Northern Ireland. The aims of raising cultural awareness and dispelling socio-political nonchalance in the North were central to the objectives of the Field Day group. However, despite Friels concerns with contemporary Ireland, the play is also an enchanting fictive account of the Irish experience of British colonialism. My aim in this page is to firmly fanny Transla tions within its historical context, in order to understand the representation of colonialism in the play and to facilitate further post-colonial readings.Translations may be located some(prenominal) temporally and spatially to a fixed point in Irish history. The characters hail from Baile Beag, renamed with the anglicised title of Ballybeg. The action of the play occurs over a second of days towards the end of August 1833. Before delving into the play it is clear, from these most habitual of points, that the mise-en-scene of Translations is a period of great significance in the colonial kind between Ireland and England.The lifetime of Hugh and Jimmy Jack, the sixty years or so running up to 1833, bore witness to many important events in the metamorphosis of Ireland from a rural Gaelic society to a mod colonial nation. To go back another seven decades, in 1704 punishable laws were enacted which decreed that a Catholic could not hold any obligation of state, nor stand for Parli ament, vote, join the army or navy, practise at the grade insignia nor....buy land (Kee Ireland A History 54). Thus, by 1778 a mere basketball team per cent of the land of Ireland was owned by Catholics. The Irish people (most notably Catholics, though Protestants also) such as those portrayed in Translations suffered severe discrimination, privation and hardship.The French Revolution of 1789 jolted Irish political thinking into a new fr... ... to speak side of meat and every subject will be taught through English (396).Maires desire, at the opening of the play, to speak English shall soon be enforced by law throughout the case Schools in Ireland. Where Dan OConnell and Maire both assumed the use of English would bring home the bacon progress towards their respective national and personal dreams, Hugh believes that English was simply for calling but that it couldnt really express us (the Irish) (418). He clear that the use of Gaelic, of remaining true to their own tradition s was a method of resisting colonialism, our except method of replying to .... inevitabilities (418).Perhaps the most ironic passage in the play appears during a conversation between Yolland and Hugh. Hugh indulges himself the smiling position of condescending to the adolescent soldier, dismissing William Wordsworth (and by implication English Literature)Wordsworth?.... No Im unnerved were not familiar with your literature, Lieutenant. .... We tend to overlook your island (417).Poignantly, within a relatively short period of time the poetry of Wordsworth, and of the English canon, would be read and recited by the majority of children in Ireland.