Abstract
zhis chapter examines the function of Woman as fantasy object in Yeats’s Cuchulain cycle of plays including: At the Hawk’s Well (1916), The Green Helmet (1910), On Baile’s Strand (1904), The Only Jealousy of Emer (1922) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939). The Lacanian notions of ‘fantasy’, ‘Symbolic Order’ and the ‘Real’ will be used to analyse the relationship between the protagonist Cuchulain and the various manifestations of Woman as fantasy object in the female characters in the plays. The aim is to reaccentuate the interpretive focus on the Cuchulain cycle, from a predominant concern with national identity, towards a critique of the gender hierarchies inherent to the plays and their cultural context of production.
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© 2014 Paul Murphy
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Murphy, P. (2014). Courtly Love and Heroic Death in W. B. Yeats’s Cuchulain Cycle of Plays. In: Collins, C., Caulfield, M.P. (eds) Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362186_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362186_5
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