Edmund F. DeHoratius, “A Modern Odyssey: The Intertextuality of Brian Friel’s Translations and its Classical Sources,” IJCT 7 (2000-2001), pp. 366-385.

Brian Friel, in his 1980 play Translations, deliberately locates the play in a distinct textual tradition through direct quotes from both classical and contemporary texts. Previous scholars who have examined this textual tradition have focused largely on Friel’s contemporary sources. Those scholars who have examined the play’s classical elements have focused more on specific quotes or scenes, rather than on the play’s overall debt to its classical sources. Direct quotes from the Odyssey and the Aeneid (among other classical works and allusions) create a complex intertextuality between Friel’s play and its classical texts. Odysseus, as a wanderer, as one eager to learn, and as one adept at disguise and deception, is a fundamental character for Friel, who sees in Odysseus the necessary tools for cultural survival. Utlimately, however, Friel cannot proclaim an Irish cultural victory. Instead, in Translations he uses classical texts and the cultures they represent to unify the Irish in the face of cultural adversity and to reconcile the survival of Irish culture through the medium of the English language.