William Butler Yeats Essay, Research Paper

William Butler Yeats is best known for his big part to the Irish Literary Renaissance of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, his composing entirely would hold been alone plenty to get down a literary Renaissance even if he had non been joined by fellow writers Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, Edwin Ellis, and many others. Yeats began composing because he was inspired by the civilization and history of Ireland. As a kid, Yeats moved frequently and later in life, he travelled invariably throughout Europe and to America. His early Hagiographas, based on Celtic myths and beliefs offered to him the foundation of his ain civilization which had survived for 1000s of old ages, therefore leting him to be rooted in his fatherland no affair where he travelled. Yeats manner of poesy, particularly, is evidently written to be different from any other writer s and is meant to touch a portion of the head that has ne’er earlier been reached by poetry or prose. His attack to poetry was decidedly new to the universe of literature and possibly caused the singularity in his authorship. Yeats, through his literary plants, redefined the boundaries that had limited earlier authors and presented possibilities which had non antecedently been considered in composing poesy. He grasped a better apprehension of where poesy should arise: We should compose out our ideas, he said, in every bit about as possible the linguistic communication we thought them in, as though in a missive to an confidant friend. .

The life of William Butler Yeats was affected the most by the three things he loved best: Irish republic, his confidant friend Maud Gonne, and literature. Yeats is born on June 13, 1865 in Dublin. His parents are John Butler Yeats, an creative person, and Susan Polexfen. At the age of two, Yeats and his household move to London where his brother Jack and sisters Elizabeth and Susan are born. Yeats moves to Hammersmith, England at the age of 12 and begins composing poesy in the 1880 s before traveling back to Dublin in 1881, where he attended Erasmus Smith High School. The undermentioned twelvemonth, Yeats moves to Islandview and falls in love with his distant cousin Laura Armstrong, with whom he has a ephemeral love affair due to her deficiency of involvement in him. Yeats needs to go forth Islandview and Laura behind after being rejected, therefore he enrolls in the School of Art in Dublin at the age of 19. The undermentioned twelvemonth, his first verse forms ware published in the Dublin University reappraisal and he joins literary nines in his country.

In 1886, Yeats begins to plunge himself in the common people narratives of Ireland, researching Gaelic fables and get downing to compose about Ireland and its history. At this clip, the Irish Literary Renaissance is get downing and Yeats, along with other Irish authors begins composing non merely about Ireland, but his plants are besides directed toward an Irish audience. When Yeats is 22, his female parent suffers two shots during a period of unwellness and Yeats moves with his household to London. He so joins the literary circle at the Kelmscott House of William Morris. This begins a period in Yeats composing in which he is greatly influenced by the literary plants of Shelley and Spenser ( Jeffares, xiii ) . In 1888, Yeats publishes some of his Hagiographas in American diaries, and for the first clip, he becomes known outside of Great Britain. He works as an editor, referee, and critic in the Bodleian, a publication at Oxford. The undermentioned twelvemonth, Yeats publishes Crossways, his first book of poesy and subsequently in the twelvemonth, The Wanderings of Oisin, which includes more verse forms. He meets Oscar Wilde, Edwin Ellis, with whom he collaborates in composing Fairy and Folk Tales that twelvemonth, and Maud Gonne, to whom he is instantly attracted. However, she is an Irish revolutionist and remains uninterested in his quiet, literary nature. He is therefore influenced to go involved in the Irish Revolutionary Movement in order to catch the oculus of his new found love.

In 1891, Yeats founds the National Literary Society at Dublin and the undermentioned twelvemonth, he writes his first drama, The Countess Cathleen for Maud Gonne, trusting that she will someday play the female lead. He besides publishes another volume of Irish faery narratives. At the age of 28, he begins redacting the Celtic Twilight and along with Ellis, edits The Works of William Blake. Yeats so publishes The Rose, another aggregation of verse forms. Soon after, he visits Paris for the first of many times and writes The Land of Heart s Desire. In 1896, he has an matter with fellow author Olivia Shakespeare, but shortly returns to the love of his life, Maud Gonne. In another effort to affect her, Yeats joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a radical organisation that Yeats himself has small involvement in. He so meets many of the other chief subscribers to the Irish Literary Renaissance, including Lady Gregory and J. M Synge.

Yeats spends the following summer with his new friends at Coole, the estate of Lady Gregory and begins composing his lone novel, The Speckled Bird, which is ne’er published. In 1898, he goes on a circuit of England and Scotland with Maud, who so rejects his proposal of matrimony, and he shortly goes once more to Paris. Wind Among the Reeds is published, which is the first of Yeats poetry that sways from his early manner and is evidently influenced by his survey of Gaelic civilization. The Countess Cathleen is foremost performed in Dublin and receives negative reappraisals. In 1900, Yeats mother dies and he gives up his calling as a radical by retreating from the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood and other similar organisations of which he is a member.

In 1902, he becomes president of the Irish National Dramatic Society and publishes Cathleen Ni Houlihan, his most celebrated drama. It is performed the same twelvemonth in Dublin with Maud Gonne moving in the lead function. The undermentioned twelvemonth, Maud all of a sudden marries John MacBride, a radical, and a devastated Yeats goes to America for a talk circuit. He returns place and becomes manufacturer and director of the Abbey Theatre in 1904, and vacate this place in 1910. Over the following few old ages, Yeats publishes

more aggregations of verse forms, including In the Seven Woods, Poems 1895-1905 and The Green Helmet. He travels to Italy with Lady Gregory and Paris with Maud. In 1914, Yeats visits the United States once more, where his popularity is turning. Two old ages subsequently, John MacBride dies and Yeats proposes to the freshly widowed Maud Gonne, who once more rejects him. He gives up on Maud and marries Georgiana Hyde-Lees in London ; they spend their honeymoon at Oxford.

Over the following few old ages, Yeats travels around Great Britain and to America. He publishes The Wild Swans at Coole and Michael Robartes and the Dancer, and his two kids, Anne and Michael, are born. In 1922, the Irish Civil War Begins and Yeats father dies. The same twelvemonth, Yeats is elected a senator of the Irish free province. He so receives the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923, travels across Europe, and publishes A Vision and The Tower, more verse forms.

In 1929, Yeats and his household travel back to Dublin and he suffers from Malta febrility, doing him to be ill for the remainder of his life. Over the following few old ages, he publishes Seven Sages, Words for Music Possibly, Collected verse form and The WindingStair ; he besides goes on his last U. S. circuit. Yeats publishes most of his dramas and essays in the mid 1930 s and dies on January 28, 1939 at the age of 74. His last verse forms were published the twelvemonth of his decease. He wrote invariably during the last decennary of his life likely because the decease of many of his close friends every bit good as his unwellness remind

ed him that he merely had a short clip left to populate.

Yeats composing green goodss many assorted reappraisals due to the fact that his manner is still new and alone, and hence non easy understood. Yeats poetry first appears in a clip when the period of booming Anglo-Irish authors such as Swift, Burke, and Edgeworthe has long since ended. Ireland is so in a province of defeated silence and New visible radiation and air had to be let into the closed heads of a people made leery and hysterically provincial through persecution and catastrophe. ( Bogan, 7 ) . In his early old ages, Yeats is a dramatic immature poet with a strong mind hidden by his vernal indecisiveness. However, his endowment as a author and his powerful personality are shortly revealed to his equals after his manner becomes more developed. In her 1938 article in The Atlantic Monthly, Louise Bogan observed that Yeats had inherited an rational energy, . . . twirling yet profoundly intuitive and ordered head, with its equilibrating run of common sense from his Anglo-Irish parents.

During his childhood, Yeats is exposed to the wild beauty of rural Ireland and Gaelic-speaking people who still carry with them the old Celtic beliefs and traditions. This experience fuels his involvement in the history and civilization of Ireland and influences his authorship during the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yeats is besides determined to present through his poesy a renewed sense of assurance and patriotism to the people of Ireland. His early poesy is musical due to the influence of Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Morris ( Bogan, 6 ) . It is besides relatively shallow to his later works because he is originally endeavoring to compose popular poesy before he begins composing of Gaelic beliefs and the history of Ireland. His early verse forms, such as the celebrated Lake Isle of Innisfree are full of graphic imagination and sensory inside informations, but do non travel any farther than to observe the beauty of people, topographic points, and emotions ( Bogan, 5-9 ) . However, Yeats shortly additions a new enthusiasm for composing during his visits to England in the early 1890 s and He brought back seeds of this stimulation to Ireland: to a dirt which had lain fallow for a long clip ( Bogan, 7 ) .

Celtic becomes more popular in Ireland during this period and Yeats follows this motion by including in his poesy kernels of a plaintive religious beauty ( Jeffares, xv ) , normally found in Gaelic poetry. His beliefs, which were less than steadfast to his Protestant upbringing, allowed him to sufficiently research the possible truths of old Irish beliefs in his following volume of poesy. Yeats poetry from The Wind Among the Reeds, his first aggregation incorporating Gaelic symbolism and Gaelic beat, was severely received by the populace. However, these verse forms, these evocations of Celtic beauty, gallantry, and unfamiliarity wakened. . . Ireland s ears to the sound of its ain voice talking its ain music. ( Bogan, 8 ) . Around the bend of the century, his poesy reflects his worship of Maud Gonne and many verse forms from The Green Helmet show his lovesick desolation caused by her rejection ( Jeffares, xv ) .

In the 1910 s, Yeats composing undergoes another alteration, ensuing in his work casting the last hints of immatureness. His poesy becomes about matter-of-fact, and he no longer hides the truths of his message in either imagination or symbolism. Yeats says of this new facet of his composing manner: If I can be sincere and do my linguistic communication natural, and without going dianoetic, . . . I shall, if good or bad fortune do my life interesting, be a great poet ; for it will no longer be a inquiry of literature at all. ( Bogan, 9 ) . This new authorship was showing the complexness of Yeats personality in simpler footings ; baring his emotions and sentiments and making a clear image for the reader. In his ulterior poesy, he came to be an expert at the dramatic presentation of ideas refering love, decease, the transiency and concealed significance of all things, non merely in the signifier of a philosopher s guess, a mysterious s address, or a scholar s lonely broody, but besides in the cracked and raucous steps of a sap s, and old adult male s and an old adult female s vocal. ( Bogan, 11 ) .

Yeats alleged manner with words is the chief ground why he is easy understood every bit good as why he is easy misunderstood. His love for Ireland is expressed in his ulterior poesy and dramas through showing what society can be instead than congratulations of the history and traditions ( Heaney, 4-5 ) . At this point, he wants Ireland to be unified, and this comes off through his poetic ego fusion. He bridges the spreads between his old sentiments and his authorship reflects a certain peace that he has attained and that he wishes Ireland may achieve besides ( Heaney, 5 ) .

Cathleen Ni Houlihan is one of Yeats best known dramas. It is a brief commentary on the yesteryear, nowadays, and hereafter of Ireland which is placed in historical context. It takes topographic point in 1798, a polar day of the month in Ireland s history and is meant to be connected to a similar state of affairs during the clip in which it was written. The beginning expresses the mundane concerns of mean Irish in-between category people. However, their apparently unimportant lives come to a hamlets when they encounter a unusual old adult female. They are sort to her, unlike some others who see her as a hopeless old adult female. She negotiations of normal

happenings at first and so talk enigmatically about her life and the people she has known. She claims that many a adult male has died for love of [ her ] . ( Yeats, 54 ) and the other characters are evidently discrediting since she is merely a hapless old alien.

The adult female represents Ireland and the battle for independency, which is old and tired and in demand of support. The other characters kindness toward her shows that some people still have faith in Ireland and hope for the hereafter. She has come a long manner but has non finished her journey yet and can still be seen at whatever clip there s war or problem coming. ( Yeats, 50 ) . She complains that her Fieldss have been stolen and that there are excessively many aliens in her house ; the English have stolen about all of Ireland from its people and have inhabited a land in which they are non welcome. At the terminal of the drama, she is seen walking off from the other characters house and is no longer an old tired adult female but a immature miss [ who ] had the walk of a queen. ( Yeats, 57 ) . At this clip, the Gallic are geting to contend for Ireland, and she is hence immature and revitalised because she is one time once more deserving loving and combat for. Yeats is proposing that Ireland has already come so far and its hereafter is full of possibilities. He is besides reminding the reader that Ireland is still deserving contending for because it is still being taken advantage of by the English.

In his authorship, Yeats covers the clip before his birth, the events within the span of his life-time, and the hereafter after his decease. He gives either a Frank or an facile voice to the words of Ireland and its people and for that every bit good as his many other literary parts, Yeats has given. . . Ireland the greatest [ poet ] it has of all time known. ( Bogan, 13 ) .

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Yeats, William Butler. The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats. New York:

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