Marina Carr and Tom Murphy's Alternative Narrative: Rewriting the Irish Oral Tradition

Abstract

This study examines how Tom Murphy and Marina Carr use Irish oral tradition motifs such as folklore in their plays to bring the audience to a state of mind where they engage with Ireland's search for a cultural post-colonial identity. In The Mai, Carr employs the “myth within the play” construction. As we saw, within the Owl Lake myth, Carr seems both to mirror and modify, at times even contradict, the original folktales on which she bases her myth of Owl Lake. Carr draws a link between the life of her protagonist, the protagonist of the myth, and links both to the Irish identity question in Portia Coughlan. As did the myth of Owl Lake, the Belmont River reflects a myriad of Irish folktale motifs. Murphy's play also explores the difficulty and pressure imposed on the individual suffering from outmoded myths and unable to make a new continual mode of living that integrates important cultural change. As a result, they are especially effective in modernizing the folk motifs to speak to the increasingly fragmented diaspora of Irish, and revitalize not only these past traditions, but in turn, perhaps also the Irish identity.