Appropriations of Irish drama by modern Korean nationalist theatre : a focus on the influence of Sean O’Casey in a colonial context

Abstract

My thesis explores how a translated author on the periphery of the host culture’s translated repertoire can be at once subversive and innovative on the colonial scene, using as an example the case of Sean O’Casey in colonial Korea. It explores the importation of Irish drama in modern Korean theatre during the colonial period and examines the appropriations of O’Casey’s plays by a central Korean playwright, Yu Chi-jin, in creating his own plays. Under Japanese colonial rule in the early twentieth century, intellectuals perceived the supreme task for the Korean people to be the recovery of national sovereignty and independence. The modern Korean theatre movement which rose among Korean intellectuals and dramatists during the colonial period was to play a major part in this task. The ultimate goal of this movement was to establish a modern national theatre promoting Korean culture and educating the people, thereby recovering national independence. As their modernised dramatic polysystem was still "young", Korean intellectuals and dramatists who were involved in the theatre movement had to borrow dramatic models from other countries. One of the models they chose was Irish playwrights, especially those who were involved in the Irish dramatic movement. They published or staged the works of W.B. Yeats, Lord Dunsany [Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett], Augusta Gregory, J.M. Synge, St. J. Ervine, T.C. Murray and Sean O'Casey. Although O'Casey was considered an important dramatist in the Irish dramatic movement, he was a playwright on the periphery in the list of translated Irish dramatists in Korea due to the colonisers’ censorship. However, he remained as a subversive and innovative playwright on the colonial scene by virtue of being appropriated by Yu Chi-jin who used O’Casey’s plays as models when creating his own works. In discussing the subject matter of my thesis, I use Even Zohar’s polysystems theory as a starting point in looking at ideological issues surrounding translation and extend the discussion to offer a postcolonial perspective. While most translation in a colonial context was considered as "an expression of the cultural power of the colonisers," my thesis shifts the focus to translation as an expression of the cultural power of the colonised. I explore how the colonised uses another colonised culture to subvert the colonisers’ power