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Essay of william butler yeats and work
Essay on W. B. Yeats
Essay on W. B. Yeats
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“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
-William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is one of many men who have experienced the pains of life and gave them new voice on the world stage for the benefits of others but W.B. Yeats was not like any ordinary writer. On his shoulders was the responsibility to tell the history of an abused puppet plagued with war, suffering, and foreign meddling. Yeats is thought to be one of the most influential poets and playwrights of the 20th century. Analyzing his trail across history you will see a literary movement bursting with the revival of Irish culture. Born Protestant, Yeats was part of the minority that had been in control of
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While Yeats is a part of that structure, born into a Protestant Anglo family, he dislikes everything about it. Yet Yeats at first did not move to upend this order. Yeats, an intelligent young man, struggled with the desire of being authentically Irish but not Catholic. He was trying to find a framework to live by. It is without a doubt that Yeats believed Ireland could be culturally independent from Britain, which could lead to a political independence. Ireland, like much of its history, was divided between the ruling Protestant minority and Catholic majority. This division became a powder keg as the centuries went on, finally hitting its breaking point at the end of the 19th century. Yeats became a part of a handful of writers that pushed the narrative reflecting a cause while also being on the sidelines. Yeats became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood whose goal was to establish an independent republic of Ireland. The IRB was a propionate of the Home Rule Act which gave Ireland independence while still remaining under British law, such as countries like Canada. Nationality was the name of the game and both the Unionist (favored toward Britain) and the Irish nationalists were worried about the future of their home whether or not they believed in the same path. Yeats made to bridge this gap through literature by not …show more content…
Leaders of both the Unionists and Nationalists called for volunteers to join the British Army with Nationalists claiming their future independence was in jeopardy. Irishman and Englishman fought alone side each other yet when they returned home things were no different. The IRB forged a plan to stage an uprising before the war’s end. While war raged in Ireland Yeats remained hidden on the sidelines holding back his poetry for as long as 4 years after the Rising. Yeats was torn by these events and ultimately used his poetry to commemorate the fallen figures of the movement. Yeats’ poem “Easter, 1916” creates an image of a new Ireland. Hidden within his poem is the idea of the rebirth of “Romantic Ireland”; the heroes returned and the glory restored. While Yeats was inspired by the Rising, critics wonder whether his feelings were truly that a rightful path was taken. Though the years after the Rising was hard the words of Yeats inspired those to look at what they accomplished and move forward. Though the leaders of the Rising were executed Yeats’ poem could be seen as a precursor to the fight that must be
Yeats, William Butler. The De-Anglicizing of Ireland” in Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose. ed. Pethica, James. W.W. Norton & Company, USA, 2000.
In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels left behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, "foolish" methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,?
The Irish Troubles: Yeat's Poetry. William Butler Yeats, born in Dublin, Ireland [June 13, 1865], is considered by many to be one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. The following exposition, grounded on the hypothesis that Yeats’ poetry was resolutely influenced by the political occurrences of that time period, will give biographical information, a recounting of the political upheaval during that period, specific poetry excerpts/critical analysis and validation of the hypothesis. William Butler Yeats is one of the many famous names to come from the original Golden Dawn. "His poetry and writings were a display of his passion for mysticism and the Occult Sciences"(www.webus.com/hogd/bioyeats.html).
William Yeats is deliberated to be among the best bards in the 20th era. He was an Anglo-Irish protestant, the group that had control over the every life aspect of Ireland for almost the whole of the seventeenth era. Associates of this group deliberated themselves to be the English menfolk but sired in Ireland. However, Yeats was a loyal affirmer of his Irish ethnicity, and in all his deeds, he had to respect it. Even after living in America for almost fourteen years, he still had a home back in Ireland, and most of his poems maintained an Irish culture, legends and heroes. Therefore, Yeats gained a significant praise for writing some of the most exemplary poetry in modern history
Using this as his point of departure, Said enters into a line of argument which claims that Yeats was a central figure in debating and asserting an overt drive towards the construction of a national Irish identity as a vital act of decolonisation. Further, Said places Yeats within a global framework of anti-Imperialism, drawing parallels between the Irish poet and Third world writers and theorists such as Fanon, Neruda and Achebe. Though an incredibly influential essay, the reverberations of which may still be felt in Inventing Ireland and other texts, it is also a work that demands close analysis and is replete with short-sighted and ill-informed ideas.
Catholic Ireland has been under the control of Protestan England since the 1160s, during this period (insert year) the Normans invaded under the protection of King Henry the II. In the past Ireland had been a resource to the English being ‘expendable.’ Identified in “no likely end could bring them loss” this is referencing the suffering of the Irish and that the outcome of war will cause the citizens to lose everything. Yeats emphasising his opinions of the pointlessness of war in “Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds” the repetition enhances his views of war, and how he has no duty to this war or to join, as he will not gain anything. Yeats’s only motive to joining was “the years to come seemed waste of breath” meaning that his life had been a waste extenuated through the symbolism of ‘breath’ which extends this notion of the local and universal issues of the past and present that plagued both Yeats and his country.
In William Butler Yeats' poem, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," he focuses on man's inner nature. He touches on the many jumbled thoughts that must race through one's mind at the point when they realize that their death is inevitable. In this poem, these thoughts include the airman's believed destination after leaving Earth, his feelings about his enemies and his supporters, his memories of home, his personal reasons for being in the war and, finally, his view of how he has spent his life. Through telling the airman's possible final thoughts, Yeats shows that there is a great deal more to war than the political disputes between two opposing forces and that it causes men to question everything they have ever known and believed.
...tember 1913, there were only a few people that made huge sacrifices for independence in their country while others had contradicted their efforts and only focused on themselves. It was seen as if the heroes died in vain. In Easter 1916, the reader is able to notice a change in the people’s views and see that they are now the ones who are fighting for Ireland’s independence in honor of their previous leaders. The change Yeats talks about is that the result of the 1916 rising and the execution of some of its leaders. In turn the country revolted into the War of Independence. The Free State resulted in dividing the country both geographically and passionately along with those who had accepted the Free State and those who didn’t.
“Overview: An Irish Airman Foresees His Airmen.” Poetry for students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierowski and Mary Ruby. Vol.
This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...
...otism is established in a seemingly simple testament to a dead soldier. What better way to honor the dead than to personify Lady Ireland through his character! The passion that Yeats subconsciously incorporates into his poem equals that of his love for Ireland. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death begins on a low and desperate note, but reaches its’ climax upon Gregory answering Ireland’s call, and ends by, essentially, posing a question to the reader. ‘As a collective people, which side of the teeter-totter do we belong?’ He leaves his hero (Gregory) hanging in the balance of an important national question. The poem may be about Yeats’ character foreseeing his death, but the fact remains: he is in the act of ‘foreseeing,’ he is not dead yet…and neither is Ireland.
WB Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin. His parents were John Butler Yeats, a portrait painter, and Susan Pollexfen. His family was upper class, Protestant and of Anglo-Irish descent. His ancestors were church rectors. His mother's famil, the Pollexfens, were known for their eccentricities manifested by an interest in astrology and magic. He was very interested in super sensual experiences and visions which came to him "from the back of his mind". Eventually, he became interested in Hinduism and the occult. During his life, he developed interests in theosophy, ancient civilizations, psychic power, spiritualism, magic, eastern religions and the supernatural which in due course led to the conception of "The Second Coming"(first published in November 1920).
Yeats, an Irish nationalist, used the three poems, “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” “September 1913” and “Easter 1916” which revealed an expression of his feelings about the War of Irish Independence through theme, mood and figurative language. The theme of nationalism dominates in “To Ireland in the Coming times” and in “Easter 1916.” In the former poem, Yeats suggested the idea of Irish brotherhood to achieve justice for Ireland, “True brother of a company, that sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong” (Finneran 50). Although he wanted to fight for Ireland’s freedom, he did not participate in any military activities. Instead, he used songs and poems to reflect the situation in Ireland: I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them (Finneran 51).
On the surface, William Butler Yeats’s poem No Second Troy, tells the narrative of a man questioning his unrequited loves morality and ideology. However, further reading of the poem gives the reader insight into Yeats’s own feelings towards Irish radical, Maud Gonne, a woman to whom he proposed on numerous occasions unsuccessfully. Gonne had always been more radical than Yeats within her efforts to secure Ireland’s independence from Britain in the first decades of the 20th century, but Yeats persisted in receiving her love, dedicating many of his poems to her, thus showing his obsession to the radical actress. The poem can be split into four rhetorical questions; first the speaker asks “why” he should blame her, for his own unhappiness; next he questions “what” else she could have done with her “noble” mind; following this, the speaker, seemingly speaking to himself, accepts that she is who she is and that cannot be changed, lastly the speaker questions whether there is anything else that could have been an outlet for her “fiery” temperament.
W. B. Yeats is one of the foremost poets in English literature even today. He was considered to be one of the most important symbolists of the 20th century. He was totally influenced by the French movement of the 19th century. He was a dreamer and visionary, who was fascinated by folk-lore, ballad and superstitions of the Irish peasantry. Yeats poems are fully conversant with the Irish background, the Irish mythologies etc. Yeats has tried to bring back the “simplicity” and “altogetherness” of the earlier ages and blend it with the modern ideas of good and evil. Almost all his poems deal with ancient Ireland ...