본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

The Politics of the Body in The Cripple of Inishmaan

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2008, 21(2), pp.137-154
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

김화순 1

1인천대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In The Cripple of Inishmaan(1997), Martin McDonagh displays the amalgamation of his ambivalence for political issues and artful management of the subject matter, producing a unique political discourse about Ireland and its people. In the play the audience/reader cannot ignore the striking contrast between images of two bodies that insinuate a multi-layered social and political nuance: one is the image of the protagonist Billy Claven's crippled body and the other is the romanticized healthy bodies of the heroic men in the film Man of Aran. McDonagh intentionally makes a contrast between two different images of bodies and deconstructs the Irish's fantasies of the body politic and idealized Irishness, exposing the gap between reality and idealism. Since the first performance of the play was held in 1996, the setting of the play is actually for the audience/reader in the global age. The fusion of the political perspectives of 1930s and 1990s enriches the dynamic of the political discourse of the playwright. This paper explores the politics of the body revealed in the analogy between the body politic and the human body in The Cripple of Inishmaan. It suggests that the crippled body of Billy functions politically as a metaphor for the incomplete freedom of Ireland as represented by the Free State. His diseased and deformed body culturally parallels the deformed convictions or fantasies of Irishness as perceived by the Irish people. In this respect, the title of the play includes a poignant satire of the people on Inishmaan who hold deformed prejudices about the human body and the body politic. Ultimately, the playwright treats Billy's disability as an allegory of disabling Irishness and his treatment turns into another political discourse about the body in the play. He passionately spins the story about the people on Inishmaan and suavely makes a discourse about the politics of the body for the future of Ireland and England. Although his discourse is often equivocal, it may be the political discourse of a playwright who knows that he knows his subject matter.

Statistics

  • 170 Viewed
  • 0 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

Basic Search Advanced Search