WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

1865-1939

Biography

Born in Dublin, Anglo-Irish family Fascinated by Irish mythology and the occult Spiritual by nature, but couldn’t accept Christian

dogma Caught up in the rise of the “Fenians”, 1890’s

nationalism and the demand for Irish home rule 1889 met Maud Gonne

heiress and nationalist Became infatuated with her Proposed several times, but was refused

She married another revolutionary 1908 began an affair with her

Bio - continued

1916 finally marries at age 51 Met wife in his occult clubs She was an “spirit” or “automatic” writer Marriage was successful

2 children 1922-1928 a senator in the Irish Free

State

Intro

Adopts many “masks” and approaches radical nationalist classical liberal reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist

The gyre: Two opposing wheels set in motion Governing creation Cyclical theory of existence:

All this has happened before, all this will happen again his work is varied, contradictory Post-colonial writer

effects of British empire/colonization on literary production. Nationalism, anti-nationalism, the creation of a national identity Rebellion, revolution, resistance to colonization vacillating and ambivalent attitudes towards the colonizer hybridity

Art/Politics

Yeats proposes A connection between art and politics that his

writing brings to mind In “Man and the Echo,” for example, Yeats asks: “Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the

English shot?” (lines 11-12). The play, Cathleen ni Houlihan, co-authored by Yeats

with Lady Gregory, may have helped mobilize the revolutionaries who participated in the Easter Rising of 1916.

draws attention to the political power of his own writing also brings up questions about the effect of art on politics in general.

Art/Politics

Literature in this sense is not merely decorative or confined to rarefied academic circles, something with the potential to touch and

influence events in the real world. helped to shape attitudes, however, also tells us much about existing attitudes, offers significant insights into Irish culture and

history. conflicted literary responses to this history

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

Themes: Longing for an idealized pastoral Ireland; imagining rural self-reliance and escape

from urban desolation mythologizing and constructing an

independent, non-British Ireland.

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

Gives some sense of his early Romantic influences

reveals Yeats as Irish nation-builder and myth-maker How does he imagine a free Ireland here?

parallels between the speaker’s intention to “live alone” (line 4) and plant his “Nine bean-rows” (line 3), and a self-sufficient Ireland.

Innisfree

The island’s name notions of hybridity and nationalism? Contradictory? Innisfree is literally a “free island,”

real location in the west of Ireland free from British rule

also a hybrid word, combining English with Gaelic, How the two cultures are intertwined. Yeats made a conscious decision not to use the Gaelic spelling.

mythologizing an idyllic Ireland, this is the “real” Ireland, not the streets of Dublin or elsewhere. represents the life (the heart), the center, of Ireland, and as such

becomes a national symbol. constructing a national identity separate from British identity.

“Easter 1916”

Easter rising in Ireland 1916

An attempt to end British rule in Ireland

Irish republican forces seize key locations in Dublin

Put down by the British in a matter of days

Leaders arrested, high ranking ones executed

“Easter 1916”

Ambivalent tone Did not please some of his friends

fluctuating view of the Irish revolutionaries who carried out the rebellion. Look for indication of class distinction sincere respect

also some disparaging remarks cannot be entirely erased by recognition of the

rebels’ martyrdom

“Easter 1916”

Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart” admires the commitment of the revolutionaries questions their tactics and their judgment.

Believes that the English government may eventually grant the Irish their independence asks: “Was it needless death after all? For England may keep

faith” (lines 67-68). Moreover, he wonders: “what if excess of love / Bewildered

[the slain nationalists] till they died?” (lines 72-73). By the final lines, the refrain: all “changed, changed

utterly: / A terrible beauty is born” (lines 79-80) What is “born” here? What does Yeats think of Ireland’s future

and why?

“Second Coming”

Themes: One historical epoch is ending:—in chaos while another epoch—unknown and potentially

frightening—is being born. Key Passages:

“The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” lines 2-3;

“A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, / Is moving its slow thighs,” lines 14-16

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” lines 21-22.

“Second Coming”

presents an explosive vision of the coming era.

historical birth catastrophic proportions the speaker yields to his own fevered

imaginings What is this beast?

Why does it appear after “twenty centuries of stony sleep”?

Why is the new era imagined as half man, half beast?

“Second Coming” turns Christian rhetoric against itself

In Christian terms: the Second Coming is the end of the world when

all are judged and sent to their respective fates. Yeats’s scenario:

the Christian era is not the entire or most significant aspect of history;

it is dismissed as merely “twenty centuries of stony sleep” (line 19)

about to be replaced by another historical epoch disturbing, coarse, and fragmented, but perhaps just

as long-lived as the former.

“Second Coming”

the falcon and the falconer relationship to the disintegrating center :

“The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart the centre cannot hold” [lines 2-3]).

What do the “falcon” and “falconer” represent? Christ and the modern era? A more generalized concept of a strong leader and his public? something more abstract?

Yeats’s politics were ambivalent at this point: anti-democratic/pro-fascist tendencies speaker is worried about the loss of order in the world

disorder growing out of the disturbances of war and revolution