Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa (CTLLI), 2015-2016.

Unit 1 Study
Guide

COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS
LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA
GRADO

UNIT 4 GUIDE | ANALYZING DRAMATIC TEXTS

2022-2023
GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES:
LENGUA, LITERATURA Y CULTURA
Isabel Castelao
Adriana Kiczkowski (co-ordinador)
Inés Ordiz

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 CTLLI
STUDY GUIDE-UNIT 4
Analyzing Dramatic Texts

Introduction

1. What is Drama?
1.1. Elements of Drama

2. Textual analysis: Brian Friel, Translations (drama)

2.1. Cultural and literary contextualization
2.1.1. Biographical information
2.1.2. Historical and cultural context.
2.2. Analysis of dramatic elements (structure, style, language, content).
 Self-Study activities/answers.

3. Literary Criticism:
3.1. Introduction to postcolonial literary criticism
3.2. Critical authors
3.2.1. Frantz Fanon
3.2.2. Edward Said
3.2.3. Homi K. Bhabha
3.2.4. Gayatri Spivak
3.3. Fragment by Edward Said, Orientalism (1978).
 Self-Study activities/answers

4. Activity

5. Self-assessment (Quiz)

6. References

7. Further resources

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INTRODUCTION

This unit is dedicated to the analysis of dramatic texts. As an introduction to the subject,
we are going to read different definitions of the genre as well as the most important
structural elements to take into account when analyzing a theatre play.
Then, we will read Translations by the Irish writer Brian Friel and we will make a
guided analysis of the play through a series of exercises and exploratory questions.
Finally, we will analyze the play from a critical perspective such as "Post-colonialism".
To do so, we will first read Chapter 10 “Post-colonial criticism” by Peter Barry in
Beginning Theory. As in the previous section, you have a series of questions to guide
you in reading and understanding the text. We will also study the figure of Edward Said,
Palestinian thinker, considered one of the fathers of Post-colonialism, and we will read
some fragments of one of his best-known works, Orientalism.
In this unit you will find different audiovisual resources that will help you in your study.
Don't forget to answer the Quiz at the end of the Study Guide, it will allow you to see
to what extent you have understood some of the key questions in this unit.

1. WHAT IS DRAMA?

The dramatic or performing arts […]

combine the verbal with a number of
non-verbal or optical visual means,
including stage, scenery, shifting of
scenes, facial expressions, gestures,
make-up, props, and lighting. This
emphasis is also reflected in the word
drama itself, which derives from the
Greek “draein” (“to do,” “to act”),
thereby referring to a performance or
representation by actors. Drama has its
roots in cultic-ritual practice, some
features of which were still present in
stylized form in the classical Greek
drama of the fifth century BC. Ancient
tragedies and comedies were performed
during festivals in honor of Dionysos,
the god of wine. While drama was one
of the main genres in classical antiquity,
its importance waned with the dawning of the Middle Ages. After the turn of the millennium,
however, simple forms of drama re-emerged. In mystery and miracle plays, religious, allegorical, or
biblical themes were adapted from Christian liturgy and dramatized for performance in front of
churches and in the yards of inns. These medieval plays, together with the classical Roman plays by
Plautus (c.254–184 BC) and Seneca (c. 4 BC—AD 65), influenced later Renaissance drama, which
reached its first peak in England with Shakespeare and his contemporaries. While classical literary
theory overlooks the nature of comedy, Aristotle (384–322 BC) deals extensively with the general
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 elements and features of tragedy. In the sixth book of The Poetics he characterizes tragedy as “a
representation of an action that is heroic and complete” and which “represents men in action and does
not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief.” By watching the tragic events on stage,
the audience is meant to experience a catharsis or spiritual cleansing. Comedy, on the other hand, has
humorous themes intended to entertain the audience. It is often regarded as the stylized continuation
of primitive regeneration cults, such as the symbolic expulsion of winter by spring. This fertility
symbolism culminates in the form of weddings, which comprise standard happy endings in traditional
comedies. Renaissance history plays, such as Shakespeare’s Richard II (1597) or Henry IV (c. 1597),
adapt English history for stage performance. These plays portray a historical event or figure but,
through the addition of contemporary references, transcend the historical dimension and make general
statements about human weaknesses and virtues. In many cases, the author chooses a historical
pretext in order to comment on contemporary socio-political misery while minimizing the risk of
censorship. William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (1564–93) revived and developed
classical forms of drama such as tragedy and comedy and were among the first to reflect on different
dramatic genres. […] Shakespeare parodies various mixed forms which, roughly speaking, can be
reduced to the three basic forms of tragedy, comedy, and history play. When the Puritans under the
rule of Oliver Cromwell and his Commonwealth (1649–60) shut down the English theaters on moral
and religious grounds, drama lost its status as a major genre. Although religion exercised only a brief
influence on drama in England in this drastic way (until the Restoration of monarchy), it had far-
reaching consequences in America. Because of the prominent position of Puritanism in American
history, drama was almost non-existent in the early phases of American literature and was only re-
established as a serious genre in the beginning of the twentieth century. During the Restoration period
in the late seventeenth century, the comedy of manners, or Restoration comedy, portraying citizens
from the upper echelons of society in witty dialogues, was very popular. […] In the Romantic period
of the early nineteenth century, England produced the closet drama, a special form of drama which
was not meant to be performed on stage but rather to be read in private. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s
(1792–1822) Prometheus Unbound (1820) is a well-known example of this unusual form of drama.
With the arrival of realism and naturalism in the late nineteenth century, social misery was dealt with
on a broader scale and drama regained its importance as a major genre, albeit one which is intricately
interwoven with developments in fiction. George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900) were among the most important playwrights of this period. All major developments in
the theater of the twentieth century can be seen as reactions to this early movement, which favored a
realistic representation of life. The expressionist theater and the theater of the absurd do away with
the illusion that reality can be truthfully portrayed on stage, emphasizing more abstract and stylized
modes of presentation. As with the postmodern novel, the parody of conventional forms and elements
has become a striking feature in many plays of the second half of the twentieth century, such as Tom
Stoppard’s (1937–) Travesties (1974) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) or Samuel
Beckett’s (1906–89) Waiting for Godot (1952). Political theater, characterized by social criticism,
together with the movements which have already been mentioned, has become very influential.
Important American examples are Clifford Odets’ (1906–1963) Marxist workers’ play Waiting for
Lefty (1935) and Arthur Miller’s (1915–) parable The Crucible (1953) about the political persecutions
during the McCarthy era. (Klarer, 43-46).

Reading drama

In many respects, reading drama is similar to reading fiction. In both cases we anticipate what will
happen next; we imagine the characters, settings, and actions; we respond to the symbolic
suggestiveness of images; and we notice thematic patterns that are likely to matter in the end. But
because most plays are written to be performed, reading plays is also somewhat different from reading
fiction or poetry. In fiction, for example, there is a mediator or narrator, someone standing between
us and the events. In contrast, drama rarely has such an interpreter or mediator to tell us what is
happening or to shape our responses. Play texts instead rely on stage directions (the italicized
descriptions of the set, characters, and actions), while exposition (the explanation of the past and
current situation) emerges only here and there through dialogue. For this reason, reading drama may
place a greater demand on the imagination than reading fiction does: The reader must be his or her
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 own narrator and interpreter. Such exercise for the imagination can prove rewarding, however, for it
has much in common with the imaginative work that a director, actors, and other artists involved in a
staged production do. In re- creating a play as we read it, we are essentially imagining the play as if
it were being performed by live actors in real time. We “cast” the characters, we design the set with
its furniture and props, and we choreograph or “block” the physical action, according to the cues in
the text. In reading drama even more than in reading fiction, we construct our ideas of character and
personality from what characters say. In some plays, especially those with a modernist or
experimental bent, certain lines of dialogue can be mystifying; other characters, as well as the
audience or readers, can be left wondering what a speech means. On the one hand, such puzzling lines
can become clearer in performance when we see and hear actors deliver them. On the other hand,
plays that call for several characters to speak at once or to talk at cross purposes can be much easier
to understand from the printed script than in performance. In interpreting dialogue, you will naturally
draw on your own experiences of comparable situations or similar personalities, as well as your
familiarity with other plays or stories. (Mays, 1153)

1.1. Elements of Drama

Questions to ask when reading drama

In reading drama as in reading fiction, you can begin to understand a text by asking some basic
questions about the elements of drama.
• Expectations: What do you expect from the title? from the first sentence, paragraph, or speech?
° after the first events or interactions of characters? as the conflict is resolved?
• Characterization: Who are the characters? Is there a list of characters printed after the title of
the play? What do you notice about their names or any identification of their roles, character
types, or relationships?
° Who is/are the protagonist(s)?
° Who is/are the antagonist(s) (villain, opponent, obstacle)?
° Who are the other characters?
° What does each character know at any moment in the action?
What does each character expect at any point? What does the audience know or expect that
is different from what the characters know or expect?
• Plot: What happens in the play?
° Do the characters or situations change during the play?
° What are the differences between the beginning, middle, and end of the play? Is it divided
into acts? Would there be an intermission in a performance?
° Can you summarize the plot? Is it a recognizable kind or genre such as tragedy, comedy,
farce, or mystery?
• Setting: What is the setting of the play?
° When does the action occur? Is it contemporary or set in the past? Do the stage directions
specify a day of the week, a season, a time of day?
° Are there any time changes during the play? Are the scenes in chronological order, or are
there any scenes that are supposed to take place earlier or simultaneously? Does the passage
of time in the lives of the characters correspond with the passage of time onstage? Or do we
understand that time has passed and events have occurred offstage and between scenes?
° Where does it take place? Is it in the United States or another country, or in a specific
town or region? Do the stage directions describe the scene that an audience would see on
stage, and does this remain the same or does it change during the play? How many scene
changes are there?
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 • Style: What do you notice about how the play is written?
° What is the style of the dialogue? Are the sentences and speeches short or long? Is the
vocabulary simple or complex? Do characters ever speak at the same time, or do they
always take turns? Does the play instruct actors to be silent for periods of time? Which
characters speak most often?
° Are there any images or figures of speech?
° What is the tone or mood? Does the play make the reader or audience feel sad, amused,
worried, curious?
• Theme: What does the play mean? Can you express its theme or themes?
° Answers to these big questions may be found in many instances by returning to your answers
to the questions above. The play’s meaning or theme depends on all its features.

Source: Mays, 1153-1154.

2. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Translations by Brian Friel.

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2.1 Cultural and Literary Contextualization

2.1.1. Biographical information

Brian Friel (1929-2015)

Brian Friel was born in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, and in
1939 moved with his family to Derry. He published
two collections of short stories, 'A Saucer of Larks'
and 'The Gold in the Sea.' His numerous awards
include the London Evening Standard Award for
'Aristocrats' (1988) and again for 'The Home Place'
(2005), a Tony Award (1992) and Laurence Olivier
Award (1991) for the massively successful 'Dancing
at Lughnasa' and a Lifetime Achievement Award
from the Irish Times (1999). Brian Friel served in the Senate from 1987 to 1989. He received honorary
doctorates from NUI, TCD, DCU, Magee University and Queen's University and was an Honorary
Fellow of UCD, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature. He was a member of Aosdána, where held the position of Saoi, and a patron of
Irish Theatre Institute. Source: PlayographyIreland

Theatre has played a prominent role in Irish culture, contributing to the

consolidation of the country's national identity. The historical conflict between Great
Britain and Ireland has been portrayed from many different perspectives. We can
name some authors such as Richard Sheridan or Oliver Goldsmith with their
comedies of manner as well as more committed or politically positioned writers such
as Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats, Sean O'Casey or Bernard Shaw. Brian Friel emerges
as one of the most notable voices on the Northern Irish literary scene. His works are
a meticulous tapestry of the many facets of the conflict between his country and Great
Britain.

Brian Friel was born in Omagh into a Catholic family in the north of Ireland but
moved to Derry as a young boy, where he received much of his education. Initially,
he wanted to follow in his father's professional footsteps, who was a teacher, but he
soon gave up his teaching career to devote himself to writing. His play The Enemy
Within, first performed in 1962, was the beginning of his national and international
recognition as a playwriter. The armed conflict between Protestants and Catholics in
Northern Ireland was heating up, and Brian Friel increasingly explored the reasons
for the violence in Northern Ireland through his plays.

His literary career could be divided into three phases according to the most
prominent concerns or themes in each of them:

1. 1952 to 1962. He wrote mainly short stories as well as plays for radio and theatre.
The most recurrent themes in this period are isolation and Irish identity, which will
remain a recurrent theme throughout his career.

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2. From 1964 to 1988 is the most prosperous period of his production. He released
plays such as Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964), The Freedom of the City (1973),
Translations (1980), and Making History (1988). This period is notable for how he
links or interweaves personal conflicts with historical events.

3. In the last phase, Friel moved to a more personal level, even with autobiographical
touches, leaving political conflicts in the background. The best-known works of this
period are Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), Molly Sweeney (1994) or Give Me Your
Answer, Do! (1997).

Brian Friel, together with actor Stephen Rea, founded the Field Day Theatre
Company in 1980. The company was created with the aim of providing a meeting
place for the different voices of Northern Irish literature, whether Catholic or
Protestant, Unionist or Nationalist. The company was based in Derry, a city that
epitomizes the conflict in the region. One of the Field Day Theatre Company aims
was to build bridges to conflict resolution through literature and culture in general. It
was originally led by writers of Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, Thomas Kilry, Tom
Paulin and David Hammond. Indeed, one of its first activities was the publication of
an anthology entitled The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991). As a result of
the company's work, Derry became an internationally recognized center of the
theatre.

2.1.2. Historical context

As mentioned above, history is an integral part of Brian Friel's dramatic work.

However, it is essential to bear in mind that his plays cannot be read as mere accurate
reflections of certain historical events. Friel himself commented that his plays were
not intended to be an exact correlation of events but rather a way of expressing what
was happening in the 1980s between Britain and Ireland through an appeal to the
past.
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 Despite the geographical proximity, many voices have criticized the way Britain
has viewed Ireland over centuries of history that resembled the treatment given to its
colonies in the Caribbean, Africa or Asia.

In 1801 the Act of Union took place, which annexed Ireland to Britain. This decision
was not received in the same way in the north and south of the country. The
Protestant majority in the north had significant industrial growth, especially in the
Belfast area. At the same time, the mainly Catholic south continued to depend on
agriculture and livestock but, above all, became increasingly impoverished.

The situation in the 19th century was exacerbated by the "Great Famine" (1845-
1849), which destroyed the Irish economy and led to the deaths of nearly a million
people and mass emigration to the United States.

The 19th century was a time of maximum expansion of the British Empire.
Maintaining its possessions required an extraordinary effort not only military but also
political, cultural, linguistic and so on.

This effort required all colonies to have a similar administrative and institutional
structure. In the case of Ireland, this was even more notorious as in the first decades
of the 19th century, the British government made an enormous effort to map the
territory by changing Irish place names to Anglicisms. Evidently, by changing place
names, an attempt was made to erase all traces of their past and national identity.

Between 1824 and 1842, a group of British government engineers went to Ireland
under the command of Colonel Thomas Colby to begin work following the project of
“The Ordnance survey”. They had to draw a new island map that would remove all
Gaelic place names and introduce English place names. The new toponymy ignored
the meaning and history of the proper names that were translated. The most obvious
case is "Baile Beg", the site where Translations takes place. In Gaelic it means "small
village" while the new English term for it was "Ballybeg", which has no meaning.

Ireland's Anglicization also affected the education system, with the British
government prohibiting Catholics and Gaelic speakers from receiving any education.
For this reason, a network of mobile clandestine schools, the hedge-schools, was set
up and moved from farm to farm to avoid detection by the British, who had orders to
dismantle them. Teachers taught classical languages such as Greek and Latin,
mathematics and the Irish language.

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2.2. Analysis of dramatic elements (structure, style, language,
content)

Now, let’s READ the play. As theater is written to be performed, we

recommend that you read the play accompanied by the following
dramatized sound version.

https://archive.org/details/faithhealer/Translations.mp3

These videos below were made in 2019 on the occasion of the staging of
Translations at the National Theatre of Northern Ireland. They will help you
before starting to analyze the play.

Video: Translations | An Introduction. Prof. James Moran. National

Theatre.

Video: Translations | What is Brian Friel's Translations about? National

Theatre.

Video: Translations I Favourite Lines. National Theatre. The cast of

Translations share their favourite lines in the show.
Video: Translations Trailer. Villanova Theater. 2016.

 Self-Study activities

Here are some questions or exercises to guide your analysis of the play. Try
them out for yourself and then consult the answers below.

1. Summarize the play in no more than ten lines.

2. How are Britain and Northern Ireland represented Brian Friel’s Translations?
3. Do Gaelic-speaking characters in Translations become integrated in an English-
speaking world?
4. What are the implications of translating Irish placenames in Brian Friel’s
Translations?
5. To what extent does language contribute to reinforce miscommunication among
characters in Translations?
6. Explain the respective evolution of Owen and Hugh in Translations and how they
come to terms with the British Ordnance Survey.

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  Answers:

1. Each student is expected to summarize the work at his or her own criteria.

2. It could be very well stated that Britain and Northern Ireland are metonymically
represented by the characters that Brian Friel creates in Translations. This means
that the author explores the different positionings that underlie the play by means
of intersecting two divergent and, on most occasions, confronted views. On the
one hand, Captain Lancey epitomizes the harsh and ruthless British official
dispatched to the colonies in order to reconfigure a tiny Irish village and to
Anglicize any vestige of Irishness. His almost pathological desire not to integrate
with the villagers of Baile Beag resounds quite accurately to the attitude adopted
by Great Britain with respect to its Irish neighbors. On the other hand, Manus
appears as the keep of the Irish tradition and the character that tries to preserve
the identity of his country. Furthermore, Translations presents several
intermediate characters that are placed in between these two poles and whose
main aspiration is to mingle with the opposite side. Lieutenant Yolland and Maire,
in this sense, do not quite realise these apparently unbridgeable differences and
only seek to live their love in peace, something that proves to be impossible.

3. Friel makes clear that the gap between these two linguistic spheres is huge and
that there are not many possibilities to reconcile them. On the one hand, we find
Manus, who defends the use of Gaelic language and sees English speakers as
intruders. Hugh’s Latinate background endows the play with another polarity since
he speaks in Gaelic and addresses his students at the hedge-school in either
Greek or Latin. It is only at the end of the play that he is forced to accept the new
Anglicized state of his village. Only Owen seems to be the character that departs
from this inward Irish reality as he voluntarily decides to speak English regularly.
This brings about a profound controversy with his older brother Manus who thinks
that he has betrayed his own identity. However, the end of the play demonstrates
that Owen can no longer put up with the British impositions and reacts against
Captain Lancey’s authority.

4. Friel’s Translations gravitates around the traumatic Ordnance Survey period in

which Britain began to occupy Irish territories and to establish a new social,
political, linguistic and geographical legislation, based on entirely British formulas.
This process, opened by the British government to consolidate its sovereign
authority over Ireland, aimed to discredit the Irish cultural and linguistic legacy by
means of erasing any remnant of Irishness. The symbolical component that
underlies the translation of Irish placenames is what articulates the whole play and
what enables Friel to construct a veiled attack against the aggressive colonial
policy implemented by the British Empire. The important issue about the fact of
Anglicising Irish placenames is precisely to undermine and to acculturate Ireland
by means of introducing new referents that aim to artificially recreate a
standardized and regimented nation. As in former examples, there are characters
like Manus and even Lieutenant Yolland who manifest the significance of
maintaining these placenames as they were originally denominated. The fact of
rendering them into a language which is not their own brings about the
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 disappearance of all the symbolical or legendary components that are associated
to the name, thus creating an empty and futile set of meaningless Anglicized
placenames. The episode of “Tobair Vree” perfectly illustrates this situation in that
Friel presents two drastically opposed visions -that of Owen and Yolland- in order
to unveil the futility of the Ordnance Survey. On the one hand, Owen states that
translating placenames should not be dramatic at all, bearing in mind that they are
just that, mere names. Yolland, on the contrary, astounded by the beauty of
Ireland, defends the idea that names are expressions of the cultural identity of a
land and that as such, they should never be modified.

5. Besides translation, miscommunication arises as one of the central motifs in

Friel’s play. It can be analyzed from many different levels and perspectives, both
internal and external. In a more internal level, there are many occasions on which
the members of the Baile Beag community show signs of not being able to
understand each other, which some critics have interpreted as a metaphorical
representation of the Northern-Irish strife. The hedge-school run by Hugh
O’Donnell is a most appropriate instance of how the intersection of several
languages at the same time can occasion serious problems of apprehending what
people are intending to explain. However, it is when members of the two sides
share the same linguistic arena that the best examples of miscommunication
occur. The impossible love relationship between Maire and Yolland turns out to
be illustrate the idea that, even though they speak different languages, they
eventually realize what they feel for each other. Less idyllic is the way Captain
Lancey tries to interact with the villagers, which inevitably forces him to ask for
Owen’s help to translate his orders. Only after Lancey threatens to carry out an
eviction of all sorts does Owen decide to stop serving unconditionally the British
Ordnance Survey, which he effects by mis-translating the Captain’s speeches.

6. Owen epitomizes the successful self-made man who abandons his rural
community in search of better and more appealing economic opportunities in the
metropolis, which he finally achieves. On his return to Baile Beag, he shows his
utter reluctance to be associated with, anything that might sound Irish and that is
why he so vehemently defends the use of English and his rejection of Gaelic. For
him, Gaelic is the synonym of provinciality and backwardness as opposed to the
cosmopolitanism and sophistication English confers him. His participation,
together with the rest of British officials, in the Ordnance Survey evinces his
detachment from his roots and his lack of any kind of ties or affection with his
birthplace. As the Survey progresses, Owen progressively realizes that the British
intervention seeks prevailingly to occupy and exploit this territory, facts that lead
him to question the basis of the project and to rebel against Captain Lancey’s
dictatorial position. Hugh, on the other hand, evolves the other way round, in the
sense that his initial consideration of the British invasion is quite critical, especially
with the British linguistic colonialism. He repeatedly suggests that English can no
longer match the Irish linguistic reality, which he manifests in some of his most
ironic interventions in the play. His approach to the standardization of Irish
placenames is quite similar to that of his fellow-villagers, in that he stands up for
the preservation of the background that underlie the. However, he finally realizes
that the changes introduced perforce by the British empire are going to take over
inevitably, something that explains the conformist position he adopts at the end of
the play.

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 3. LITERARY CRITICISM

We are going to read some critical theories to see how to analyze the text from other
perspectives with the help of interpretative tools such as the different critical currents in
literature. In this unit, we are going to go hand in hand with Post-colonialism.

3.1. INTRODUCTION TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERARY CRITICISM

Postcolonialism examines topics such as power, economics, politics, religion, and

culture regarding the effect these elements have on Western colonialism (the way
colonizers control the colonized). Critiques of Euro-centric hegemony can also be seen
as forms of postcolonial criticism, written by individuals condemning such practices.

To study the origin and development of Postcolonial Studies let's read an excerpt from
Robert D. Parker's How to Interpret Literature. Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural
Studies (2020).

In the middle of the twentieth century, the world turned a somersault. A small number of nations
had colonized a huge proportion of the world’s land and population. Roughly one out of every five
people lived in British India alone, and the Soviet Union and China were expanding and
consolidating their power. But as most of Latin America had wrested independence from Spain
and Portugal in the early nineteenth century, so in the middle of the twentieth century most of
Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia, and many peoples in the Pacific and the Middle East, broke
free from the rule of colonial powers in a wave of change that raised anticolonialist hopes and
promised to reshape the world’s hierarchies of power. Hopes soared again late in the twentieth
century when Eastern Europe broke off from Soviet control. But in many ways, colonialism turned
out to be more entrenched than anticolonialists anticipated or hoped.
Postcolonialism thus has a long history, but postcolonial studies, especially Anglo-American
postcolonial literary studies, gathered force in the late 1970s, especially with Edward Said’s
Orientalism (1978) and then a series of influential articles by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and
Homi K. Bhabha. These critics’ work, and the work their ideas responded to and helped provoke,
spoke to a powerful sense of need as readers faced up to changes in world politics and the growing
recognition of English as a language of international literature and international daily life.
Postcolonial studies emerged as a driving force in literary studies and helped reshape scholarship
and teaching across the humanities and social sciences.
At its peak, the British Empire ruled roughly one quarter of the earth’s land and population.
Economically and culturally, British power fed off British conquests. But until the last few
decades, the study of British history and especially British literature typically paid little attention
to colonialism. We can understand why, because, in many ways, colonialism was so brutal that if
the conquering peoples owned up to it, that might have led them to reject colonialism and give up
the privileges of power. In that way, Westerners had a stake, however unconscious, in not owning
up to colonialism, and certainly in not thinking about it critically. Today, postcolonial studies
offers the possibility—not yet fulfilled—of making literary study as international as literature itself,
and so it holds a powerful appeal for readers who care about the fate of the world and its writing.
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Because of its attention to racial and national politics, postcolonial studies has also held special
appeal for students, readers, and critics interested in the study of race and in the study of racial,
ethnic, and national minorities, including, in the United States, African American studies,
Latina/Latino studies, Asian American studies, and American Indian studies, and including,
internationally, Black studies, transnational studies, indigenous studies, comparative literature, and
the emerging field of world literature. Scholars in all these areas often see analogies and
overlapping questions between their own concerns and the concerns of postcolonial studies. (…)
POSTCOLONIALISM
The term postcolonial has grown routine, yet it has also led to confusion and debate. Scholars of
postcolonialism often write about the colonial as well as or instead of the postcolonial, and in many
ways, we still live in colonial times, not postcolonial times. The term’s suggestion of kinship with
poststructuralism, corroborated by the poststructuralist approaches of the most prominent
postcolonial theorists, such as Said, Spivak, and Bhabha, attracts suspicion from scholars who
want more certainty than they see poststructuralism likely to encourage. Nevertheless, (…) the
term has emerged as a convenient label for the study of colonialism, postcolonialism, and, more
broadly, cultural and political relations between more powerful and less powerful nations and
peoples.
The different kinds of colonies. Postcolonial literary studies consider writing from colonizing
peoples, colonized peoples, and—especially in the twenty-first century—formerly colonized peoples.
Scholars sometimes describe the colonizing nations as “metropolitan” and sometimes divide the
colonies into two different kinds (each with its own array of variations): settler colonies and
occupation colonies. (Occupation colonies are sometimes called exploitation colonies or colonies
of conquest.) In occupation colonies, such as colonial India and Nigeria, the colonists remain a
small proportion of the population. Typically, they leave their metropolitan homes to do their work
exploiting the colony, and then they return home and other colonizers replace them. In settler
colonies, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, the colonizers move in
permanently, and they or their descendants often grow far more numerous than the people they
colonize, whose numbers the colonizers often reduce by disease and by abuses that sometimes
reach the level of genocide. Sometimes the settlers forcibly or culturally limit outnumbered
indigenous peoples to specific areas where, surrounded by settlers, they live in internal colonies,
such as Indian reservations or reserves, South African Bantustans, and, by loose analogy, urban
ghettos.
Scholars have debated whether to include settler colonies in postcolonial studies at all. The settlers
often act like occupiers and identify with their metropolitan homelands, yet they also develop a
sense of difference from or even resentment of their homelands. Sometimes, as often in the United
States, they even lose their awareness of being settlers, act as if the indigenous peoples have
disappeared, and see immigrants like their own ancestors as invading interlopers.
Regardless, the division into two groups, settler colonies and occupation colonies, can fog
differences between different examples in the same group. And some examples, such as Ireland,
Algeria, Kenya, Hawaii, and South Africa, do not fit clearly into either group. In the Caribbean
the two patterns combine, as the colonists decimated the native peoples, replaced them with and
absorbed them into forcibly imported populations of enslaved laborers, and then acted much like
exploitation colonists. The distinctions among different kinds of colonies thus remain up for
debate, and they probably serve us best if we question them and keep them provisional.
Following the independence of India and Pakistan (including what is now Bangladesh) in 1947,
the wave of newly independent nations inspired excitement and hope across South Asia, Southeast
Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East. Some countries had to fight the colonial powers
before achieving independence, but most won independence peacefully. Some countries went on
to set up successful democracies, while others met a more checkered fate, shifting back and forth
between elected and imposed governments.
In many countries, local oligarchs and dictators betrayed the promise of independence by
exploiting the divisions and disarray left by colonialism. Such leaders reproduce many of the
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abuses of colonialism, including the concentration of capital and resources in a few hands,
undemocratic government, ethnic and racial demagoguery, the exploitation of labor and the
environment, the displacement of local populations, and restrictions on speech and civil liberties.
Under their leadership, postcolonialism transforms into neocolonialism. Neocolonialism updates
the ravages of colonialism, merely splitting the profits between the local oligarchs and the colonial
powers, now represented not only by colonialist governments but also by colonialist, international
corporations, often turning the rage for “globalization” into colonialism under another name.
Hybridity. All these shifts in politics and economics, including the cosmetic adjustments that
change little beyond the color of some of those who reap the profits, underline that colonialism is
a matter of how people think as well as a matter of military power. The shifts of recent history
leave the world not so much divided in two between colonizers and colonized as (in postcolonialist
lingo) hybrid. Cultural hybridity comes from the way that colonized people and colonizers have
taken on many of each other’s ways of living and thinking. Many colonizing peoples moved to the
lands they colonized. And millions of people from colonized and formerly colonized countries,
under the pressure of war, forced displacement, or economic disaster or in search of economic and
educational opportunities or change, have migrated to the metropole and to other formerly
colonized countries.
With enormous (in postcolonialist lingo) migrant, diasporic, or exiled populations, with the mixing
of peoples and cultures, with global trade and communication, and with disputes over whether and
how much to welcome migrants, the metropolitan countries and the colonized countries have both
changed. Historically, the metropolitan countries have tended to deny the ways that international
dialogue, migrant populations, the descendants of migrants, and the commerce between cultures
have changed the metropole. They also often see the changes in colonized nations and populations
as peculiar, amusing, or threatening mixtures that compromise the authenticity of supposedly
exotic locales, as if historical change were a feature of the metropole but not of the rest of the
world. More recently, amidst a reaction against migration from Africa and the Middle East to
Europe, from the European continent to the United Kingdom, and from Mexico and Central
America to the United States, many people in metropolitan countries have responded with a fear
that migration may bring too much cultural change (…).
Postcolonialism, transnationalism, globalization. With rapid globalization, cultural critics often
call attention to the ways that contemporary international culture, politics, and economics have
taken on an increasingly corporate dimension. Giant transnational corporations reenact the
colonialism of old under a mask of, at best, half-truths about mutual economic development. With
frequently exploitive wages, terrible working conditions (especially for women), ferocious
environmental devastation (…), and collusion with corrupt and undemocratic governments,
contemporary transnational corporate globalization often takes more than it brings or shares. By
the twenty-first century, with the movement of migrant, exiled, and diasporic populations and the
surging power of multinational and now transnational corporations, transnationalism and
globalization have emerged as the contemporary inheritors of postcolonialism. Many critics now
move back and forth among the terms postcolonialism, transnationalism, and globalization,
sometimes magnifying their varying nuances and other times using them almost interchangeably,
while other critics keep the term postcolonialism at the forefront because of its franker invocation
of politics and imbalances of power, and because it connects to the history of colonial and
postcolonial resistance and writing, a history that we may now, in brief, review.
(…) Postcolonial studies has changed the way that we read British, Irish, and American writing.
In an economy and cultural life that depend on colonial and neocolonial exploitation, colonialism
is woven through the literary self-portrait of imperialist nations, sometimes explicitly (…), and
sometimes surreptitiously.
(…) In these ways, whether or not literary writing dwells explicitly on colonialism and racial
conflict, it often depends on them, for colonialism and racial conflict are part of the economic and
cultural foundation of Europe, the United States, and the many lands that they have conquered
militarily, politically, or economically. From Shakespeare and his predecessors to the present,
colonialism and racial conflict have helped to shape English language culture and literature.

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3.2. CRITICAL AUTHORS

In this section we will take a closer look at some of the main figures of post-colonialism,
the theoretical movement we are studying.

3.2.1. Frantz Fanon

The Martinican Frantz Fanon stands out as one of the most provocative,
influential theorists and practitioners of anticolonial resistance. Fanon, drew
upon his own experiences in French Algeria to deconstruct emerging
national regimes that are based on inheritances from the imperial powers,
warning that class, not race, is a greater factor in worldwide oppression, and
that if new nations are built in the molds of their former oppressors, then
they will perpetuate the bourgeois inequalities from the past. Fanon
sympathized with the Négritude movement, understanding how racist
colonialism had gone so far to strip colonized people, including blacks, of
their sense of racial self-respect and a proud history. His book The Wretched
of the Earth (1961) has been an important inspiration for postcolonial
cultural and literary critics who seek to understand the decolonizing project
of Third World writers, especially those interested in African and African
American texts.

3.2.2. Edward Said

In literary studies, the boom in postcolonial criticism began with Edward

Said’s Orientalism (1978). Drawing on ideas of the French philosopher
Michael Foucault, the Palestinian American Said argued that the West has
constructed a colonial discourse that produces the ideas about the Orient (the
East). Said’s concept of Orientalism was a major touchstone to postcolonial
studies, as he described the stereotypical discourse about the East as
constructed by the West. This discourse, rather than realistically portraying
Eastern “others”, constructs them based upon Western anxieties and
preoccupations. Said sharply critiques the Western image of the Oriental as
“irrational, depraved, child-like, different”, which has allowed the West to
define itself as “rational, virtuous, mature, normal” (Said 1978: 40). In this
way, Orientalism transformed the meaning of that term such that it no longer
refers to a disinterested field of scholarship but an expression of power relations, a way of positioning the
East as inferior to the West. Many of Said’s major studies have made a major contribution to breaking
down the assumption that the aesthetic is a realm of autonomous values by demonstrating literature’s
complex affiliations with European colonialism and Western imperialism.
(Source: Oxfordbibliographies.com).

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3.2.3. Homi K. Bhabha

Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial theory involves analysis of nationality,

ethnicity, and politics with poststructuralist ideas of identity and
indeterminacy, defining postcolonial identities as shifting, hybrid
constructions. Bhabha critiques the presumed dichotomies between center and
periphery, colonized and colonizer, self and other, borrowing from
deconstruction the argument that these are false binaries. He proposes instead
a dialogic model of nationalities, ethnicities, and identities characterized by
what he called hybridity: that is, they are something new, emerging from a
“Third Space” to interrogate the givens of the past. Perhaps his most important
contribution to postcolonial theories has been to stress that colonialism is not
a one-way street that involves an interaction between colonizer and colonized, where the colonizer is as
much affected by its systems as the colonized. Cultural hybridity comes then from the way that colonized
people and colonizers have taken on many of each other’s way of living and thinking (Parker: 363).

3.2.4. Gayatri Spivak

Among the most important figures in postcolonial feminism is Gayatri

Chakravorty Spivak, who examines the effects of political independence
upon “subaltern” or subproletarian women in the Third World. Spivak first
attracted wide notice by translating into English Derrida’s most influential
book, Of Grammatology. Her own work brings deconstruction together with
feminism, Marxism, and postcolonial theory, and her interest in feminism and
gender helped expand and deepen postcolonial criticism. Spivak’s subaltern
studies revealed how female subjects were silenced by the dialogue between
the male-dominated West and the male-dominated East, offering little hope
for the subaltern woman’s voice to rise up amidst the global social institutions
that oppress her. In her influential article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1985),
she raises questions for people with less power, namely women, Indians (South Asian Indians), and Indian
women in particular. In her theories, Spivak noted that female characters boosted their subjectivity, their
sense of individual personhood, finding the question of whether the subaltern can speak for herself or even
for a larger subaltern group. (Parker: 367).

3.3. FRAGMENT BY EDWARD SAID, Orientalism (1978)

READ the following excerpt from Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) and then
answer the questions bellow.

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 Unlike the Americans, the French and the British -less so the
Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Swiss- have
had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of
coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special
place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only
adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and
richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and
languages, its *cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and
most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has
helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea,
personality, experience. Yet none of this Orient is merely
imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material
civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represent that
part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of *discourse with
supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery,
doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. […]
The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an
academic one […]. Orientalism lives on academically through its
doctrines and theses about the Orient and the Oriental.
Related to this academic tradition, […] is a more general meaning […] based upon a […]
distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident”. Thus a very large mass of
writers […] have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate
theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people,
customs, “mind”, destiny, and so on […]
[Another] meaning of Orientalism, […] can be discussed and analysed as the corporate institution
for dealing with the Orient -dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it,
describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. […] [T]his book […] tries to show that
European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of
*surrogate and even underground self. […]
Perhaps the most important task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary
alternatives to Orientalism, to ask how one can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or a
nonrepressive and nonmanipulative, perspective. But then one would have to rethink the whole complex
problem of knowledge and power. These are all tasks left embarrassingly incomplete in this study. […]
The nexus of knowledge and power creating “the Oriental” and in a sense obliterating him as a
human being is […] not for me an exclusively academic matter. Yet it is an intellectual matter of some
very obvious importance. […] Too often literature and culture are presumed to be politically, even
historically innocent; it has regularly seemed otherwise to me, and certainly my study of Orientalism has
convinced me (and I hope will convince me literary colleagues) that society and literary culture can only
be understood and studied together. […] I should like also to have contributed here […] a better
understanding of the way cultural domination has operated. (Said, 1978).

 Self-Study activities on postcolonial literary theory and

Edward Said Orientalism.

1. Look up and give definitions of the words marked with an *asterisk.

*cultural contestant (paragraph 1)

*discourse (par. 1)

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 Suggestion: you can find a definition of discourse in the GLOSARIO icon on the
curso virtual.
*surrogate (par. 4)
2. In paragraph 1, Said contrasts the imaginary Orient with the material Orient. What
attributes does he confer on these two manifestations of the Orient?
Suggestion: base your answer on this opening paragraph.
3. Said offers three designations or meanings for the term Orientalism. Summarize
them.
Suggestion: base your answer on the information in paragraphs 2, 3 and 4.
4. What, according to Said, is the most important task of all (par. 5)?
5. In paragraph 6, Said proposes that literature be studied in a certain way. What way
or approach does Said suggest?
6. Summarize the extract, taking into account your answers to the above questions.
7. Read the following excerpt by Edward Said on Translations and comment on it in
your own words.
Brian Friel’s immensely resonant play Translations (...) immediately calls forth many echoes and
parallels in an Indian, Algerian, or Palestinian reader and spectator for whom the silencing of
their voices, the renaming of places and replacement of languages by the imperial outsider, the
creation of colonial maps and divisions also implied the attempted reshaping of societies, the
imposition of foreign languages and systems of education, and the creation of new elites. (Said,
2003, 178).

8. Think on the differences existing between colonialism, imperialism and

postcolonialism.

9. Bearing in mind the historical antecedents, can Ireland and Northern Ireland be
considered postcolonial nations?

 Answers

1. Brief definitions:
a) Cultural contestant: “contestant” -someone who takes part in a dispute or
challenge. Said is implying that historically the Orient has challenged or
rivalled the West in cultural terms.
b) Discourse: “In contemporary critical theory, discourse is understood to mean
an instance of language or utterance that involves the speaker/writer-subject
and listener/reader-object. It may include in principle any form of utterance -
Biblical exegesis, a poem, a newspaper editorial, an advertising campaign or
a lullaby. Michel Foucault argued that discourse colludes with power”. Said is
unequivocal about the collusion (= connivencia) of the discourse of
Orientalism with Western institutional power structures.
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 c) Surrogate: substitute (noun).

2. The imaginary Orient, according to Said, represents one of the West’s most
deep-rooted and persistent images of the Other; the material Orient is a form of
discourse supported by institutions, language, academic study, principles,
bureaucracy and a certain way of doing things (“style”).

3. Said assigns the following three designations or meanings to Orientalism:

a) An academic one (“through its [Orientalism’s] doctrines and theses about the
Orient and the Oriental”).
b) The distinction between the Orient and the Occident, East and West.
c) The corporate institution or “Western style” for controlling and shaping the
Orient.
4. According to Said, it is of paramount importance to seek “contemporary
alternatives” to Orientalism and study other cultures from a “non-repressive” and
non-manipulative perspective”.
5. Said argues that society and literature should be studied together and hopes his
arguments shed light on structures of power and domination.
6. [The summary of the extract must be shorter than the extract itself, use simpler
language and contain its main ideas.]
7. You might reflect on the idea that Edward Said gives this work an international
character, because for him it reflects the situation of any people who have
suffered colonisation.

8. Before the emergence of postcolonialism as an arena of intellectual debate, the

dichotomy colonialism-imperialism had been traditionally misinterpreted.
Colonialism and imperialism were believed to operate on the same terms, although
it is more than clear that the differences between them are noticeable. Whereas
colonialism simply seeks the physical takeover of overseas territories with the sole
intention of exploiting them, imperialism pursues not only the control of these lands
from the distance but also the indoctrination of native populations. In this loke vein,
postcolonialism appears as an area of contestation, a response and challenge to all
the assumptions defended and postulated by the imperial advocates.

9. Despite de long-standing reluctance to approach Ireland and Northern Ireland as

postcolonial states, there are many hints that certainly reveal that both can be
regarded as intrinsically postcolonial. It has been repeatedly suggested that this
status has been marked by a profound sense of anomaly, in that linguistic,
geographical and even religious proximity between Great Britain and Ireland were
constantly overlooked in favor of the former’s colonial exploitation. In this like vein,
the whole of Ireland was treated even more humiliatingly than other British Overseas
Territories. As Jonathan Swift or William Molyneaux demonstrate in most of their
writing, the unfair economic, political and social policies implemented by the British
administration ended up exterminating any remnant of productivity in Irish territories.
In his Drupier’s Letters, Jonathan Swift rightly refers to the devaluation of the Irish
coinage effected by Woods and Molyneaux denounces the control of the Irish
manufacturing networks exerted from the metropolis, all of them situations that
uncover a visible colonial relationship.
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4. ACTIVITY (Not compulsory)

 REFLECT on the ways in which literature has contributed to create and reproduce
stereotypes about the "Other". What are these stereotypes, and what examples do you
recall? DISCUSS them in the forum with your classmates.

5. QUIZ

 ANSWER the Quiz located in the Virtual Course (Work Plan/Unit 4). The Quiz is
an exercise for you to check if you have assimilated the contents of the unit.

6. REFERENCES

Ashcroft, Bill, et al, The Empire Writes Back, 1989.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. An Introduction to literary and cultural theory.
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture, 1994
Boltwood, Scott. Brian Friel, Ireland and The North. Cambridge University Press. 2007.
Childs Peter and Patrick Williams. An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory, 1997.
Elices Agudo, Juan Francisco. Nuevas Literaturas en Lengua Inglesa. UNED. 2004.
Ganzt, Lauren J. “Archiving the Door of No Return in Dionne Brand’s at the Full and Change of
the Moon.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. 13.2 (2015). 123-147.
Guerin, Wilfred L, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, and John R. Willingham. A
Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, 2011.
Klarer, Mario. An introduction to Literary Studies. 3rd edition. Routledge. 2013.
Lo, Jaqueline and Helen Gilbert, “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis”. The
Drama Review. Vol. 46, no. 3, 2002, pp. 31–53.
Mays, Kelly J. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 12th edition. Norton. 2017.
McGrath, F.C. Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama. Language, Illusion, and Politics.
Parker, Robert D. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies,
2020.
Roche, Anthony (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel. Cambridge University
Roche, Anthony. Brian Friel. Theatre and Politics. Palgrave MacMillan. 2011.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism, 6th edition, 2006.
Said, Edward. “Afterword”. Ireland and Postcolonial Theory. Carroll, C. and King, P. (eds.),
University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

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7. FURTHER RESOURCES
Obituary. Brian Friel. BBC.

Contemporary Postcolonial & Postimperial Literature in English

Post-colonial Criticism. Prof. Paul Fry (video)

Edward Said: Orientalism. April 16, 2003.

We recommend you watch/read these examples of postcolonial theater, specifically from

Chicana/o theater to further expand the relation between drama and the postcolonial in
English language:

a) Luis Valdez, Los Vendidos and Las dos caras del Patroncito
b) Cherrie Moraga, The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea
c) Luis Valdez- Founder of “El Teatro Campesino”

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