Yeats + Friends

‘No poet in our day has written more about his family and friends than Yeats, and no one has been more successful in enlarging them to heroic proportions.’

1. Discuss, commenting specifically on a small group of poems.

2. Make your analysis as detailed as possible and draw the generalizations appropriate to your analysis.

INTRODUCTION

I will begin this essay with a brief history of the life of William Butler Yeats in order to secure an understanding of the social and historical context from which he created his works. I will then go on to explain the broad development of Yeats’s poetic form, style and technique showing in particular how his works can be separated into two separate periods providing a brief account of the influences in each period on his themes, context and subtexts. I will then discuss these points while, ‘commenting on a small group of poems’ in particular …I will provide a detailed analysis drawing appropriate generalizations…

BRIEF HISTORY

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin on the 13 June 1865, living his life through the changeover from the Victorian to Modernist era. At the age of two William and his family followed his father, a Pre-Raphaelite painter to London where he lived from the age of two until he was sixteen. This was a difficult time for his family particularly his mother who longed for her home country of Ireland, consequently through her stories and songs as well as holidays, William was instilled with a very strong sense of Irish patriotism. William returned to Ireland in 1881 where he enrolled in the Dublin based, Metropolitan School of Art. Over the next five years he developed a fascination with literature as well as the occult and supernatural, William first published poems in 1885 in The Dublin University Review and formed the Dublin Lodge of the Hermetic society in 1886. In 1887 his family returned to London where a displaced Yeats became more focused on literature then ever. For the next few years William was primarily focused on identifying and expanding Irish heritage. He collaborated on Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry with George Russell and Douglas Hyde and injected Celtic influence into his works such as The Wonderings of Oisin and Other Poems. William eventually returned to Ireland permanently in 1896. Over the next decade he pursued various literary exploits including his involvement in the Irish literary revival and co-founding of the Abbey Theatre. Beside his roles as an Irish poet, playwright and mystic, William became involved in politics assuming the position of senator which developed his acclaim in the political sphere. Ultimately these three elements of Yeats life namely, the supernatural, Irish folklore and heritage as well as politics would prove to be the main influences on his literary works. Yeats won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 and in 1934 shared the Gothenburg Prize with Rudyard Kipling. He eventually died in 1939.

POETRY BACKGROUND

Yeats created an amazing number of literary works over his lifetime. His poetry in particular can be divided into two separate periods. The first period lasted about fifteen years from 1886 until around 1900. Like his father his technique was initially influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites but he also took direction from the Victorian era, particularly the work of Shelley. According to Yeats, Percy Bysshe Shelley would prove to be the most important of these technical influences and he took from Shelley a measured, semi-musical pace that served to propagate and characterize Yeats’s themes during this period. The central themes of this period were Irish folklore and mysticism. His poetic expression itself was fairly ordinary, drawing influence from the poets of the Victorian era, his work was descriptive and elaborate entrenched in the aesthetic.

In the second period, Yeats’s age and political involvement had a major influence on his work. His work no longer existed in the realms of the mystical and was far less colourful and aesthetically descriptive. Instead his themes became more realistic, rooted in politics and every day Irish life. The dichotomy between this period and the previous one is significant as one of his common themes, the physical held up against the meta-physical and the harsh reality of Irish life in contrast to the optimistic themes of its folklore. His work became more personal with his subjects including close friends, family and lovers and he sought to depict the experience of ageing and its influence on these relationships. In the second period of his work, Yeats explored and mastered the traditional forms of verse. He took influence from modernism by presenting his themes with a more serious and direct