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'Tinkers' Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller

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This book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online - view abstracts and keywords at book and chapter level.

Related Categories

Literary Studies - Twentieth Century Onwards

Literary Studies - Plays & Playwrights

Film Theory & Criticism

Recipient of the 2009 CLAS Excellence in Research Award

'Tinkers'

Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller

Mary Burke

344 pages | 216x138mm

978-0-19-956646-4 | Hardback | 16 July 2009

Price: £66.00

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The first work to trace the figure of the 'tinker' back to medieval Irish historiography and English Renaissance literature and forward to contemporary US screen depictions
Reassesses the legacy of major Irish writer J.M. Synge on the centenary of his death
Includes a section of biographical notes and a glossary of terms

The history of Irish Travellers is not analogous to that of the 'tinker', a Europe-wide underworld fantasy created by sixteenth-century British and continental Rogue Literature that came to be seen as an Irish character alone as English became dominant in Ireland. By the Revival, the tinker represented bohemian, pre-Celtic aboriginality, functioning as the cultural nationalist counter to the Victorian Gypsy mania. Long misunderstood as a portrayal of actual Travellers, J.M. Synge's influential The Tinker's Wedding was pivotal to this 'Irishing' of the tinker, even as it acknowledged that figure's cosmopolitan textual roots. Synge's empathetic depiction is closely examined, as are the many subsequent representations that looked to him as a model to subvert or emulate. In contrast to their Revival-era romanticization, post-independence writing portrayed tinkers as alien interlopers, while contemporaneous Unionists labelled them a contaminant from the hostile South. However, after Travellers politicized in the 1960s, more even-handed depictions heralded a querying of the 'tinker' fantasy that has shaped contemporary screen and literary representations of Travellers and has prompted Traveller writers to transubstantiate Otherness into the empowering rhetoric of ethnic difference. Though its Irish equivalent has oscillated between idealization and demonization, US racial history facilitates the cinematic figuring of the Irish-American Traveler as lovable 'white trash' rogue. This process is informed by the mythology of a population with whom Travelers are allied in the white American imagination, the Scots-Irish (Ulster-Scots). In short, the 'tinker' is much more central to Irish, Northern Irish and even Irish-American identity than is currently recognised.

Readership: Students and scholars of modern drama, Irish studies, cultural studies, and ethnic and racial studies

The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.

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'Tinkers'

Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller

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