Abstract
The nine full-length plays Sean O'Casey wrote in England from 1928 to 1959 share a heavy reliance on myth, legend, and folklore. The mythopoeic whole these works form has not been readily discernible largely because it depends so strongly on the bird symbolism O'Casey uses as an organizing, unifying, and thematic device. These plays, taken as a whole, are organized into a clear, mythic pattern taken from the world's great solar myths, especially those derived from Celtic civilizations, which have as their basis the seasonal death and rebirth of all things. The purpose of this study is to establish O'Casey's debt to the solar myths, to analyze the bird metaphors lying beneath the surface of these plays, and to explore the ways solar myth and bird metaphor unite to support the playwright's major themes. The Silver Tassie, Within the Gates, and Red Roses for Me grow out of the Grail legends and mourn the incomplete life resulting from the separation of lance and grail, of the "feminine" principle from the "masculine" principle. Each makes use of bird symbolism based on traditions surrounding waterfowl associated in myth with full daylight and the ancient worship of solar deities. The Star Turns Red, Purple Dust, and Oak Leaves and Lavender rely on the Great Flood of the Old Testament and on Celtic inundation myths. The most prominent birds in these plays are associated in myth and legend with darkness and deluge. In Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, The Bishop's Bonfire, and The Drums of Father Ned, O'Casey reintroduces us to birds associated with sunny weather, but the most prominent birds relate in specific ways to the advent of dawn and the coming of spring. The birds in O'Casey's middle and late plays may be classified not only as solar birds and rain birds but also as those representing natural forces of some kind and those representing unnatural forces of some kind. They ultimately serve to epitomize O'Casey's two great themes: the twentieth century perversion of the natural that amounts to a surrender to death and darkness, and the resurrection to life through enlightenment.
O'Valle, Violet May Owen (1982). Death and resurrection in Sean O'Casey's Ireland : solar myth and bird metaphor in the mature plays. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -514446.