"Soglie simboliche in due drammi irlandesi: W.B. Yeats e J.M. Synge"

Abstract: The present paper deals with the concept of threshold as represented in two different plays staged in 1903 in Dublin, namely W.B. Yeats’s The King’s Threshold and J.M. Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen. In both cases the playwright intended a physical threshold as a symbolic element. Yeats’s is a mythical play while Synge’s is a realistic farce. While the former is meant to identify the struggle for a noble ideal ‒ the social role of poetry in contemporary society ‒ the latter contests the traditional values of Irish rural society. The thresholds of a noble palace and of a rural cottage are two different metaphors identifying the importance of opposition to social and cultural values