Yeats’s Poetics of Excess or “Re-Stating” Ernest Renan’s and Matthew Arnold’s Celticism. (original) (raw)

W. B. YEATS’S POETRY: CRYSTALLIZING IRISH ETHNIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

Myths and folklore often help create ethnic and national identity. Common shared heroic or subjugated backgrounds serve as focal points around which people can rally to a common cause. When the questions of ethnicity, identity and their impact upon literature, and viceversa, are mentioned the poetry of W. B. Yeats has to be reckoned with as a force which was both influenced by and deeply influenced the crystallization of Irish ethnicity and identity through the unearthing of myths and Celtic folklore lost in the palimpsest of time.

A study on Irish nationalism and its impact upon the growth of W.B.Yeats’ poetry

European societies and cultures. However, even within European societies, there are instances of subordination of one culture by another. One such instance is the relationship of Irish culture with the English to which the former had a subservient relationship similar to the colonization of one society by another. Nationalism, in Irish political scenario, procures its twin facets: political and cultural. In a bid to gain political independence Irish intelligentsia collectively rose to the occasion. Irish native literature grounded on Gaelic culture and studies, so long lost in British wilderness, comes to see the day light again. In the Irish context, W.B. Yeats, a great modern English poet, is significant in any study that seeks to examine the circuits of cultural relationships within societies having an unequal relationship as between England and Ireland. It was under the influence of John O'Leary, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, Maud Gonne and some others that Yeats developed an interest in Irish nationalism and went through Irish patriotic literature. This opened up for him an Ireland rich in myths and legends. The poems of Yeats tended to be somewhat moulded by myths and legends. Poetry of Yeats, especially his earlier poetry, appeared to be interested in contemporary political movements. In the process, a sense of nationalism pervaded his poems. Yeats' earlier poetry was the judicious fusion of both political and cultural interests. The growth of his poetry thus embarks upon the spirit of Irish nationalism.

The Question of Irish Identity in the Writing of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce

The purpose of this study is to foreground the ethical consequences of the attitudes to Irishness, and to Irish identity, that are to be found in the writings of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. It is my contention that their work enunciates an ethical definition of Irishness which has overt and covert political and societal implications for Ireland today. While there are many justified caveats entered in the field of academic study about the dangers of any imbrication of the literary, the aesthetic, and the political, nevertheless, I intend to argue that there are concomitant positive and emancipatory results of such an imbrication, and that these results have ethical implications for notions of Irishness and of community. Hence, I propose to theorize the different aspects of Irishness that are to be found in both writers, by contrasting them with others that were hegemonic at that time through an articulation of the theoretical writings of Theodore Adorno, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Given that this study has been written during the ongoing peace talks in Northern Ireland, talks wherein definitions and categorizations of ‘Irishness’ have been crucial, I feel that this book is a timely exploration of issues dealing with the literary, political and ethical dimensions of Irish culture and identity.

Celtic Tradition: The Guiding Force of William Butler Yeats

IIUC Studies, 2012

The folklore, myth, and legends of ancient Celtic traditions inspired William Butler Yeats a lot. By not falling into the trap of overly romanticizing his work, as many other authors of the time would do, Yeats was able to begin a tradition of another sort, the Irish literary tradition. By giving importance on the Irish culture in his work, Yeats fulfilled his own sense of national pride to the delight of his readers and audiences and to the chagrin of many of his English contemporaries who felt that nothing of value or worthy of study could come out of Ireland. From 1890 he was a member of the occult group of the Golden Dawn 1 , which fuelled his fascination with the mystic symbols of rosicrucianism and cabbalism. Because of these activities his thinking gave an emphasis on magic and apocalypticism that would remain a constant feature of his work. This article aims at exploring the Irish myth, folklore, occultism and the tradition that inspired William Butler Yeats.

Irish Nationalism in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats

SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH, 2021

W.B. Yeats was born in 1865 near Dublin in Ireland and through his literary work contributed in the cultural nationalism of Ireland. He had visions of a future Ireland that would eventually become the modern Ireland we know and love today. He attempted to bring the country together by replacing sectarian and class allegiances with a nationalistic one. When it came to nationalism, he tried to explain the significance of love and death. In this paper, I will try to discuss Irish nationalism in the poetry of Yeats.

The Construction of a National Identity: W. B. Yeats’ Poetry

Dicle Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 2021

Yeats is the most prominent devotee and initiator of the Irish Literary Revival in the early 20th century. Irishness/Irish culture was a theme he handled since his early ages. His poetic themes ranging from love to the art of poetry are preoccupied with the theme of Irishness reinforced with images and stories from Irish/Celtic mythologies and present Irish sites. Yeats' praxis of mythic/past elements together with Irish sites in his poetic universe creates bondage between old and present Irishness. Hence his poetry is turned into a declaration of opinions and intentions on an idealized Irish culture. This study aims at presenting how Yeats is manifesting an ideology to fight for a heritage and national identity by visiting Irish and Celtic mythologies as well as current Irish sites, thus creating a performative discourse in his poetry that promotes conceptual and practical understanding of Irishness to be exercised.

Visions of Ireland in W. B. Yeats's Early Works

2018

W.B. Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, born in Dublin in 1865. This thesis will explore how Yeats´s vision of Ireland changed over time. While his work were greatly influenced by Celticism, his early poetry was more interested in myths and folklore, while his later works were more explicitly political. The first chapter of this thesis deals with Ýeats´s early works in which he creates a utopian Ireland, an imaginary and magical world that was his sanctuary. The second chapter shows Yeats´s transition from a romantic to a modernist poet. The chosen poems show Yeats´s arch of political activity and how, in relation to some earlier works, his later ones show more ambiguity and vagueness.

Away with the Faeries (or, It’s Grimm up North): Yeats and Scotland

Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies

Yeats and Scotland is a coupling that might at first glance seem odd or awkward, but with the recent rise of Irish-Scottish studies it appears less so. According to Cairns Craig: 'The Irish Revival that Yeats led was profoundly shaped by the example of Scotland's acquisition of cultural capital a century before, and constructed on its theoretical foundations'. 1 Yet despite Yeats's Celticism, and his open, if uneven, admiration for the poetry of Robert Burns there are fewer clear connections between his vision of Ireland and his vision of Scotland than might be expected. Yeats, like Joyce, arrived at a negative and pessimistic view of Scotland, and this perspective derived from a despairing vision of the Scottish legacy in the North of Ireland. 2 Unlike Joyce though, Yeats came to this conclusion only after a lengthy effort to build bridges with Ulster, and, by extension, Scotland, through a common Celtic spirit, and, more concretely, through his admiration for the achievements of a series of Scottish writers. Scotophobia in an Irish context is far from being the province of modern writers, and has been a recurrent feature of Irish culture at least since the Ulster Plantation. 3 Attridge and Howes' collection of essays in 2000 addressed Semicolonial Joyce, yet Joyce is a writer who complained of struggling under a double yoke of Roman and British imperialism, and was thus doubly colonized, or double-colonial. In 'Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages' (1907), Joyce declared: 'I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul'. 4 Yeats, by contrast, can be seen to be 'semicolonial', yet he has recently been the subject