yeats themes.pptx

7/30/2019 yeats themes.pptx

1/15

Reoccurring themes in Yeats works

What are their importance?

And,

How is each theme portrayed?


2/15

Time is a big theme in Yeats works

Often Time is portrayed negatively and seems to be the real

enemy, like in Broken Dreams and In the Memory of Eva Gore-

Booth and Constance...

In Yeats later works it seems he is both obsessed and frustratedwith time


3/15

There is grey in your hairMauds beauty withered with time

But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed Maud was once

beautiful in her youth, Maud may have lost some of her appeal;

but Yeats looks forward to the afterlife when her former beauty will

be restored (which is quite fickle). It seems here beauty is only inthe eye of the beholder

The enjambment in the poem also reflects time as Yeats uses this

technique to reminisce about the past when Maud was in her

prime

Here time has stolen Maud of her youth and beauty which has

changed some of Yeats feelings for her


4/15

Blossom from the summers wreathas from the first four lines,

the girls were clearly beautiful in their youth but here Yeats is

saying that time has stripped them for their beauty as they are now

When withered old and skeleton-gaunt

Dear shadows shadows of the past, past memories Have no enemy but timetime is the true enemy here

As in Broken Dreams, time seems to have a damaging effect on

the girls beauty as it has withered them.

However time is not so bad as at the start of the poem Yeats isreminiscing about the old Georgian mansion, where he himself

spent a lot of time at: The light of evening, Lissadell/ Great

windows open to the south


5/15

Vanished and left but memories, that should be out of

season/With the hot blood of youth..here Yeats could be looking

back on his youth, these memories are however ambiguous as we

dont know whether these are good memories or if he is reflecting

on his mistakes


6/15

Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky;-nature

seems to be harmonious; but also here we are reminded by the

sky that with time and the change of seasons that the sky changes

too

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me in great broken rings- time and its continuous cycle, time is

something greater than us humans: destiny, the bigger picture

The structure itself almost mimics time as each stanza in the poem

seems to reflect a different part of the year/season. However, timehas only left Yeats lonely and deep in reflection


7/15

Did that play of mine send out/ Certain men the English shot?

Did words of mine put too great strain/ On that womans reeling

brain?

Could my spoken words have checked/ That whereby a house lay

wrecked?

Yeats here is reflecting back on his life, doubting himself,

wondering if he did the right thing

Again, a reoccurring thought of Yeats, with time comes damage

as we see by the third quote as it refers to the destruction of CoolePark and Lady Gregorys mansion


8/15

The Cat and the Moon

The moonlight shines on the cat making the cat magnificent,complimenting the cat as Yeats works as the moon (Maud) is themuse behind Yeats works

The Wild Swans at Coole

Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky;

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

Here nature is harmonious as the water is still and the swans are satside by side

The Man and the Echo In contrast to The Wild Swans at Coole Nature here is volatile and

destructive, even to an extent random and pointless

Up there some hawk or owl has struck,Dropping out of sky or rock,A stricken rabbit is crying out,And its cry distracts my thought


9/15

Sailing to Byzantium

Nature here is presented to be harmonious the young in one

anothers arms, birds in the treesYeats seems bitter as they

have each other and their looks, Yeats again is wallowing in self-

pity

The Stolen Child

wandering water gushes

the waters and the wildidea of being free and in touch with

nature


10/15

Yeats uses opposites to emphasis his main points in his poems

In The Cold Heaven opposites are used to re-enforce that somerelationships/concepts cannot work as they are so different

Opposites in The Fisherman, are used to contrast the past, whichYeats clings so tightly to, and the modern world which Yeatsdespises. Art can no longer survive in a hedonistic world where allthat matters is procession and pleasure

In The Cat and the Moon, the use of binary opposites show howdistant the cat and the moon are emotionally and physically. Nomatter how hard the cat (Yeats) tries he could never have themoon (Maud) , the two are so different maybe it was never meantto be...


11/15

Broken Dreams

But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed Here Yeats looks

forward to the afterlife when he will be reunited with Maud, and her

former beauty has been restored

The Cold Heaven

rook-delighting an omen of death; Yeats is not sure if the

afterlife is a good or bad thing as it is uncertain what awaits him

A death-delighting heaven which is a very unlikely combination

when we think of the two Riddled with light-this is used to represent the body dying


12/15

The Man and the Echo

Echo. Lay down and die. is death the only way out?

What do we know but that we face/ One another in this place?

here, like in The Cold Heaven, Yeats is questioning what is there

after death and if there is a Heaven

The Second Coming

The blood dimmed tide is loosehere it is referencing

Revelation 17:3-6 which says that the beast will come as a

predecessor to the second coming of Christ. The poem ends with a rhetorical question leaving our fates in the

balance of life and death


13/15

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death

The tight structure creates an echo effect as if the airman is certainto die

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate/ Somewhere among the cloudsabove;-here there is a sense of that the airman is destined to die

In balance with this life, this deaththe airmans life in the handsof fate

waste of breathis there no way to stop this from happening?

A lonely impulse of delightthis phrase itself is ambiguous;however it could be interoperated as the airman taking pleasure in

killing/death

Sailing to Byzantium

Yeats paints a negative self-portrait, he is bitter about his ownageing and decay therefore he reduces himself to a tattered coat

upon a stick An aged man is but a paltry thing


14/15

The Fisherman

The freckled man who goes/ To a gray place on a hill/ In grayConnemara clothes/ At dawn to cast his flieshere we have anidealistic picture of a rural Ireland where men work hard doingphysical tasks

Yeats longs for an ideal audience who appreciate art and are just asintelligent as himself

The use of opposites emphasises that the old world (a world longpast) and the modern world do not mix as they are so differentascold/ And passionate as the dawn

The Man and the Echo

In a cleft that's christened Alt-this is a reference to a hill in Irelandthat is supposed to a burial ground for Celtics, Yeats was veryinterested in Irish Mythology and probably dreamt/imagined himself ina such time


15/15

In Sailing to Byzantium Yeats feels he no longer belongs in

Ireland as it has changed so much from what he knows that is

not a country for old men

yeats themes.pptx

Documents