『포샤 쿨란』에 나타난 민담과 강의 의미

Abstract

The Midlands of Ireland, which is the setting in Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan, has inherited the traditional folklore of Ireland. The unique rural landscape of the play takes on an important role in the life and death of Portia. Carr reflects, modifies, and sometimes contradicts the folklore in the myth of the Belmont River. Specifically, Carr, by connecting the river landscape with the heroine, shows that the source of the heroine’s power and identity is “water.” In the context of grotesque realism, the river simultaneously comforts and haunts Portia, and it is both the reason for Portia's living and the method of her dying. Portia's body returns to the landscape first through her drowning in the river and then in her burial, and we can only assume that her spirit will join Gabriel's in haunting the river, as she vows to do earlier in the play. Carr creates a supernatural and mysterious atmosphere by drawing myth and folklore into her very realistic story. In that atmosphere, Portia’s death in the Belmont River is not tragic. Portia finds comfort in the stories of earth and river and uses the landscape in the folklore to overcome her loneliness. In an ecological analysis, Carr personifies the river, earth, and the ghost as if they have souls and makes the heroine experience a rebirth as part of that landscape.