Translating Topographies: Brian Friel’s approach to language, landscape, and toponymy in Ireland
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Keywords: Literary Geography, Drama and Language, Gaelic Toponymy, Post-Brexit Northern Ireland
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Charles Bartlett Travis IV, Dept. History, University of Texas, Arlington
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Abstract
Brian Friel’s play "Translations" (1980) takes place in 1833 and is set in a 'Hedge School' near the village of Baile Beag, in Donegal, in Ulster during the period Ireland was being mapped by the British Ordnance Survey. Tension between Gaelic Dinnseanchas (Lore of Place Names) perceptions of place and ‘Anglo-Cartesian’ appellations of space suffuse the drama. Yolland, the English soldier / topographical engineer is befriended by Owen, the urbane son of Hugh the Hedge Schoolmaster as he seeks to translate Gaelic place names into English words and labels for the survey’s new maps. This chapter discusses "Translations" in reference to past debates between Friel’s ‘fictive character’ and geographer John Andrew’s ‘historic’ perspectives on the impact of the British Ordnance Survey not only in Ulster, but on a wider linguistical landscape. It also contextualizes "Translations" within other literary geographies detailing global nineteenth century industrialization processes in addition to the current post-Brexit milieu of Northern Ireland as a mean to address the complexity of landscapes, identities, and senses of place at play in twenty-first century Ulster.
Translating Topographies: Brian Friel’s approach to language, landscape, and toponymy in Ireland
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Paper Abstract
