Land Goddesses, Divine Pigs, and Royal Tricksters: Subversive Mythologies and Imperialist Land Ownership Dispossession in Twentieth-Century Irish and American Literature

ABSTRACT Land ownership dispossession is a key feature in establishing imperial hegemonies. Certain twentieth-century British and American writers, especially modernist and late-modernist authors, use mythology to subvert the relationship between imperial hegemony and literature and reimagine the societal beliefs, artistic justifications, and historical assumptions that provided a foundation for colonial ideologies. The authors in this study represent a transatlantic, multiethnic literary engagement with the ongoing consequences of British colonialism as related land ownership dispossession in both the Irish and American contexts. The Irish texts include several Northern Irish works: Brian Friel’s Translations (1980), Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats (1990), W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory’s Kathleen ni Houlihan (1902), and Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock (1924). The American texts include Irish American author Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947) and African American author Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The authors reveal the complicity of imperialist land ownership dispossession with imposed patriarchy, capitalist reformation of native economies, materialist attitudes toward labor and possession, and cultural domination of how native people relate to their natural surroundings. This project incorporates postcolonial and feminist analysis, myth theories, archival comparisons, and performance studies in its exploration of land ownership dispossession, imperial hegemonies, and mythologies.