“All art is collaboration.” John Millington Synge, Jack B Yeats and the Relationship Between Text and Image in ‘The Aran Islands’ (1907)

Ella Wedderburn
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2020
BA

Subject: Illustrations, Photography, Text
Country: Ireland
Period: 20th Century

10,000 words

This dissertation is centred around John Millington Synge’s The Aran Islands’ (1907), illustrated by Jack B. Yeats. An interdisciplinary approach is taken in the exploration of the relationship between text and image. As a product of the Irish Literary Revival, the cultural context from which the book emerged is of considerable importance.The first chapter explores ideologies of the Revival and how these manifest in both text and image, tropes such as the myth of the west, the myth of Aran and the noble savage are explored. The notable presence of primitivism in Synge’s text is also discussed and contextualissed in relation to wider trends in Europe. The second chapter discuss photographs taken by Synge on the Islands and the third chapter focuses on Jack B.Yeat’s illustrations.

Irish Georgian Society

Education Theses Register

“All art is collaboration.” John Millington Synge, Jack B Yeats and the Relationship Between Text and Image in ‘The Aran Islands’ (1907)