著者

日下 隆平

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, pp.113-138, 1994-12-20

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In recent years, there has been a growing inclination to re-examine the way that Irish exiles was perceived by British contemporaries in colonial England. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between Irish exiles and British dreamers at the end of the nineteenth century. The image of Ireland in the colonial age was derived from the Elizabethan poet, Edmund Spenser. While he had distaste for the rebel Irish, he regarded the charming landscape of Ireland as an Arcadia. This Spenser's point of view was sustained by William Makepease Thakeray and Anthony Trollope. At the end of the nineteenth century, some British people used Ireland as a stage for their dreams and ideas, such as Ann Horniman and Maud Gonne. Their viewpoints were based on a kind of colonialism. It is no exaggeration to say that 'Celticism' might be approximated to 'Orientalism'. In the 1880s, a certain kind of Irish literary emigrant was advancing to prominence. Oscar Wilde, George B. Shaw and W.B. Yeats were three examples of a breed which can be traced back to middle-class Irishmen on the make, who were mainly engaged in the journalistic profession in England. They were not the average Irish emigrant. One of the typical examples was Justin McCarthy who migrated from Cork journalism into the world of Fleet Street, and afterwards became a Parnellite MP. W.B. Yeats spent his youth travelling back and forth between England and Ireland. His view of Ireland is inseparable from his emigrant status. Consequently, he could discover or re-create the image of Ireland, as seen in The Shadowy Waters. M. Gonne, who had spent her childhood in Ireland, was magnetized to the revolutionary era in Ireland. She identified Ireland's independence with her own independence. In this study, therefore, the interaction between Yeats and Gonne will be dealt with as one between an exile and a dreamer.