Atıf İçin Kopyala
Kadiroğlu M.
NOSYON: Uluslararası Toplum ve Kültür Çalışmaları Dergisi, sa.14, ss.1-17, 2024 (Hakemli Dergi)
Özet
This study aims to
investigate the subversion of the heroic myth in John Millington Synge’s The
Playboy of the Western World by applying the ‘heroic scheme’ of Lord
Raglan, who identified a set of common characteristics that appear in the lives
of mythological heroes across various cultures, and the model of the ‘monomyth’
by Joseph Campbell, who traced the universal stages of the hero’s journey
across diverse myths and folklore. Synge, the Irish playwright, poet, and
writer best known for his contribution to the Irish Literary Revival, wrote the
play in 1907, which was premiered at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in the same year. Playboy
precipitated controversy and riots due to its perceived mockery of Irish
rural society; however, it later came to be recognized as a masterpiece of
modern drama. Christy, the parricide protagonist, lacks conventional heroic
attributes, and Synge’s portrayal demonstrates that Christy does not belong
within the traditional heroic framework. This subversion is evident from the
play’s outset until its conclusion, through factors such as the protagonist’s
social class, the divergence between the divine and the worldly, and deviations
in mythotypical skills and qualifications. Methodologically, the analysis first
applies Lord Raglan’s heroic scheme to assess Christy’s alignment with
traditional heroic traits, followed by an examination through Campbell’s model
to evaluate Christy’s non-heroic position. The goal of this complementary
approach is to offer an exploration of structural, thematic, and contextual
elements revealing layers of heroic subversion that a single-method approach
might overlook.