John Millington Synge Versus Douglas Hyde and the Gaelic League: The Playboy of the Western World and the Ideals of the Irish Revival

Abstract

This thesis attempts to understand the debate between John Millington Synge and The Gaelic League following Synge's production of "The Playboy of the Western Terms" as a debate over the morality and the ideals that should be front and center in the Irish effort of cultural definition. The thesis relies on newspaper articles recovered in online archives (Irish News Archives and British Newspaper Archives), the essays, speeches, and writings of John Millington Synge and Douglas Hyde, and archival manuscripts from the Trinity College Dublin Archives in Dublin.