Modernist Studies Ireland Works in Progress

BIOS

Iva Yates is a doctoral candidate at the University of Limerick. Her interdisciplinary PhD project is titled The Golden Comb: A Novel and Critical Analysis. She holds a BA in English from Boston College and a MA in English Literary Studies from the University of York.

Dana Garvin is a PhD candidate at the University of Limerick. Her current research focuses on the visually symbolic intricacies contained within the Yeatses Automatic Script and the mostly unpublished drawings and illustrations imbedded throughout the entirety of the extant pages. She is working towards a complete indexing and system of categorisation for this visually striking material as well as a dissection of the material within the framework of visual rhetorical analysis.

ABSTRACTS

“Female Nations: Cathleen Ní Houlihan and The passion according to Antígona Pérez’s Triadic Structures and Blood Sacrifice”

In 1968, Puerto Rican playwright Luis Rafael Sánchez brought to the stage La pasión según Antígona Pérez (The passion according to Antígona Pérez). The play’s title character, Antígona Pérez, is based on Sophocles’s Antigone and represents Puerto Rico as a nation struggling to be part of Latin America yet trapped in the vise of the United States.

On the other hand, in W. B. Yeats’s play Cathleen Ní Houlihan, the Poor Old Woman represents an Ireland that hopes to break free from British rule yet has been unable to do so.  However, at the promise of a rebellion, she transforms from an old woman into a young one; the symbol of a new beginning.

These two plays, written at different times in the twentieth century, both use women to depict the island nations that have been subjected to colonial rule by different empires; the Spanish and then American in the case of Puerto Rico, and the British in the case of Ireland. In both instances, a blood sacrifice is required to achieve freedom but how this is achieved and the result of said sacrifice differs.

This paper examines both plays from a transnational/ postcolonial perspective, and looks into how Ireland’s and Puerto Rico’s parallel histories converge, how the plays use triadic structures for the required blood sacrifice, how they differ in outlook, and how this is portrayed in the texts through the intersection of gender and nationalism.

“Dissecting Mysteries & Exploring Sequences in the Automatic Script”

This presentation examines the visual aspects of George and W. B. Yeats’s automatic script. The automatic script served as the foundational material that would eventually become Yeats’s A Vision. While this research does exist in a state of evolutionary progression, this presentation gives an overview of the script and will highlight some of the key visual elements, drawings, and illustrations that exist throughout the extant pages. The discussion will primarily focus on the overarching patterns within some of the more prominent illustrations and the underlying meanings behind those images. Throughout the presentation, a strong emphasis will be given to George Yeats’s role in the creation of this material and her contribution as not only interpreter but also as artist. This discussion will provide the primary areas of categorisation for the whole of the automatic script illustrations and will highlight the main purposes of said drawings. Additionally, the presentation will include information on some of the unique visual trademarks of some of the key communicators as well as highlight some portions of previously undiscussed, hidden symbolic material that permeates the entirety of the script.