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W.B Yeats use of symbols in his poetry
Yeats as a poet
Years as an Irish national poet
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The fin de siecle, or late 1800's, was an era not unlike our own: now we see many seeking "New Age" enlightenment; likewise, Yeats and many of his contemporaries looked for meaning in various areas of the supernatural. Ripe as the late 1800's were for spawning occult study, those were also times of political turmoil for the Irish, and Yeats became involved with Irish nationalism as well. His desire to express this nationalism was given voice through a Celtic literature that he hoped would inform and inspire his countrymen. Falling in love with a beautiful firebrand Irish patriot (who also had a taste for the occult) only served to further ignite the Celtic flames of imagination in Yeats.
References to supernatural Celtic beings and the Irish spirit world abound in Yeats's early poetry. To make these passages seem less arcane, a look at the Tuatha de Danaan, the Sidhe, and the fairies is helpful.
The Tuatha de Danaan literally means "people of the goddess Danu," Danu being a Celtic land or mother goddess, perhaps derived from the Sanskrit river goddess, Danu. Other associated names for her were the Welsh "Don," Irish "Anu" or "Ana," "Mor-Rioghain," and "Brighid."
The Tuatha de Dannan were considered supernatural, angelic-like beings who came to Ireland and encountered two groups that they successfully overcame. Epic battles were waged to defeat both the Firbolgs and the Fomorians.
The Firbolgs, early Irish settlers, were a short, dark race of men who derived their name from carrying clay in bags, or boilg, hence the name "fir bolg" meaning "bag men." Believed to be of early Greek origin, the mortal Firbolgs were overthrown by the god-like Tuatha de Danaan.
The other army that lost in combat with the Danaan fighte...
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...Richard. Yeats: The Man and the Masks. New York: Norton, 1979.
Gregory, Lady. Gods and Fighting Men. New York: Oxford UP, 1970.
Jeffares, A. Norman. A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Stanford, CA:
Stanford UP, 1968.
Jeffares, A. Norman. W.B. Yeats: Man and Poet. New York: Barnes, 1966.
Malins, Edward. A Preface to Yeats. New York: Scribner's, 1974.
O hOgain, Daithi. Myth, Legend and Romance: An Encyclopedia of the Irish Folk Tradition.
New York: Prentice, 1991.
O' Suilleabhain, Sean. Irish Folk Customs and Belief. Dublin: Folklore, 1967.
Skelton, Robin, and Ann Saddlemyer, eds. The World of W.B. Yeats, revised ed. Seattle, WA: U of Washington P, 1967.
Yeats, W.B. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, 2nd revised ed. Ed. Richard J. Finneran.
New York: Scribner, 1996.
Yeats, W.B. Mythologies. New York: Collier, 1959.
Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic
Wilberg, Jonah. "Keats to Autumn Analysis." Humanities 360. N.p., 8 Jan. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
Swift, Jonathan. "A Voyage to Lilliput." Gulliver's Travels. dover thrift study edition. mineola, new york, ny: Dover publications, 1995. 226., . . Print.
The tales were rediscovered around 1880 inspiring the Irish literary revival in romantic fiction by writers such as Lady Augusta Gregory and the poetry and dramatic works of W.B. Yeats. These works wer...
Shelton, J. N., & Richeson, J. A. (2005). Intergroup Contact and Pluralistic Ignorance. Journal of
Jonathan Swift is one of the best known satirists in the history of literature. When one reads his works, especially something like Gulliver’s Travels, it is easy for one to spot the misanthropic themes, which emerge within his characterization. Lamuel Gulliver is an excellent protagonist: a keen observer, and a good representative of his native England, but one who loses faith in mankind as his story progresses. He ends up in remote areas of the world all by accidents in his voyages. In each trip, he is shipwrecked and mysteriously arrives to lands never before seen by men. This forms an interesting rhythm in the novel: as Gulliver is given more and more responsibility, he tends to be less and less in control.
William Yeats is deliberated to be among the best bards in the 20th era. He was an Anglo-Irish protestant, the group that had control over the every life aspect of Ireland for almost the whole of the seventeenth era. Associates of this group deliberated themselves to be the English menfolk but sired in Ireland. However, Yeats was a loyal affirmer of his Irish ethnicity, and in all his deeds, he had to respect it. Even after living in America for almost fourteen years, he still had a home back in Ireland, and most of his poems maintained an Irish culture, legends and heroes. Therefore, Yeats gained a significant praise for writing some of the most exemplary poetry in modern history
Swift consistently uses allegory throughout Gulliver’s Travels to induce an extreme sense of self-doubt in the reader. In Gulliver’s fourth voyage, Swift uses th...
Jonathan Swift uses Gulliver travels to somewhat criticize the English society. Gulliver visits four society’s that each have likeness back to England. He sees the Houyhnhnms, Laputa, Brobdingnag, and Lilliputian who all share similar problems. Swift successfully creates the satiric mode by pointing out the same flaws of England through a different society to make the social ills apparent to the reader.
Swift started his satirical novel by using this name to show that humans are very gullible. As proof one could look at the original audience of this book. Swift’s targets had no idea he was mocking them; they assumed he just wrote a children’s book which is why the name, Gulliver, fit perfectly. Besides Gulliver the next characters Swift introduces are the Lilliputians. Swift uses the Lilliputians to to highlight man’s sense...
In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift uses multiple examples of political, religious, intellectual, economic, and social satire to exhibit the faults of Europe during the eighteenth century. This story, however, also has contemporary connections. The high and low heels of Lilliput, for example, can represent Democrats and Republicans in the United States. Swift’s use of satire allowed him to criticize what was happening in Europe at the time without being too obvious about it. Whereas many other novels were being burned for criticizing governments, Swift was able to mask his criticisms through satire. He was still able to inform the readers of the faults of Europe without angering any leaders. Ultimately, Swift is able to use satire to comment to serious societal issues of the eighteenth century while still providing an entertaining novel.
This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...
Yeats and Eliot are two chief modernist poet of the English Language. Both were Nobel Laureates. Both were critics of Literature and Culture expressing similar disquietude with Western civilization. Both, prompted by the Russian revolution perhaps, or the violence and horror of the First World War, pictured a Europe that was ailing, that was literally falling apart, devoid of the ontological sense of rational purpose that fuelled post-Enlightenment Europe and America(1). All these similar experience makes their poetry more valuable to compare and to contrast since their thoughts were similar yet one called himself Classicist(Eliot) who wrote objectively and the other considered himself "the last Romantic" because of his subjective writing and his interest in mysticism and the spiritual. For better understanding of these two poets it is necessary to mention some facts and backgrounds on them which influenced them to incorporate similar (to some extent) historical motif in their poetry.
Showing that the King of Lilliput’s ego is severely inflated because he cares too much for pride and power. “Lilliput and its rival island, Blefuscu, are thought to be Swift 's satiric disguises for England and France, respectively.” (Merriam Webster) In a time of war, Swift uses the empirical rivalries to create a parallel and criticize the behavior of both nations in the on going war. Swift also uses this novel to reveal his analysis the aspects of human nature and its effects on the world around us. Sarah Smedman in her review of Gulliver’s Travels wrote, “Howells recognizes the personal and cultural satire but also “the far more subtle and sanative irony which plays through these most delightful studies of human Nature” ” (Smedman). Howells inadvertently noticed how Swift relieves himself through irony and satire throughout the novel. Swift enjoys showing how human beings can appear so similar despite the difference in circumstances and how alike we are. Swift accesses a familiar experience that every human being has suffered through which was isolation. Gulliver constantly felt alone because he felt he stood out so intensely. There was no one the same as him, akin to Swift with his political and social views he stood out like a sore thumb. Both Gulliver and Swift represent anomalies bearing witness to the evils, that they oppose, surrounding them.
The world is a strange place, full of strange people, strange customs, and strange ideas. Jonathan Swift understood that and chose to write down just how strange and absurd the world was, satirizing the customs of civilization and humanity by crafting strange lands with strange people and strange customs that oddly mirrored the world he lived and explained them from the point of view of Lemuel Gulliver, a man who fit into Swift’s time and Swift’s world but whose views of his world are changed by the oddities of the odd nations he visits and how their unusual behaviors reflect those of his people.