William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Performer - Culture & Literature Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Layton © 2013

W.B. Yeats 1. Life 1865  born in Dublin, Ireland, into a middle-class family belonging to the Protestant minority. His father was a free thinker with an anti-clerical attitude. As a student, Yeats was attracted to mystical doctrines and magic. Performer - Culture & Literature

1. Life 1889  met Maud Gonne, an actress and a patriot W.B. Yeats 1. Life 1889  met Maud Gonne, an actress and a patriot who led him into the politics of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. 1890s  met Lady Gregory who supported his project of the Abbey Theatre, a literary theatre to fight the commercial theatre. 1893  published a series of essays, The Celtic Twilight, to promote an Irish renaissance. Maud Gonne Performer - Culture & Literature

1. Life 1922  He was a member of the Irish Senate from 1922 to 1928. W.B. Yeats 1. Life 1922  He was a member of the Irish Senate from 1922 to 1928. 1923  In December he was the first Irish author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. 1939  He died in France. W. B. Yeats and his wife Georgie in 1923. Performer - Culture & Literature

2. The Celtic Revival Britain introduced a ban on the Gaelic W.B. Yeats 2. The Celtic Revival Britain introduced a ban on the Gaelic language in Ireland Native Irish literature was in danger of being lost. For Yeats the artist’s role was the creation of a new culture, based on Ireland’s past. Yeats collected Irish folklore and hoped in an Irish cultural renaissance. Performer - Culture & Literature

2. The Celtic Revival At first he shared the Nationalists’ concern. W.B. Yeats 2. The Celtic Revival At first he shared the Nationalists’ concern. Grew disenchanted with the Nationalist movement he saw it dominated by the values of the Catholic middle classes. Changed his political attitude after the cruel treatment by the British of the 1916 Easter Rebellion gradually placed his sympathies with the ‘moderate’ members of the government. Performer - Culture & Literature

3. Yeats’s themes Faith in the beauty and eternity of art. W.B. Yeats 3. Yeats’s themes Faith in the beauty and eternity of art. The relationship between the poet and the Irish people and tradition. Death  unlike an animal, which simply dies, man dies many times before his death. The heroic individual  loneliness characterises his heroes because their superior qualities distinguish them from the common man. Benbulben, County Sligo, Ireland. Performer - Culture & Literature

W.B. Yeats 4. Yeats’s style Employed antithesis, oxymoron and paradox  his imagination worked through the conflict and resolution of opposites. Complete coincidence between period and stanza  made possible by frequent enjambement. Sensual and sensory language  dynamic and energetic syntax, rich in verbs of motion and action. Performer - Culture & Literature

5. Yeats’s vision of history W.B. Yeats 5. Yeats’s vision of history Life and all of its phases Cycles spiralling upwards or downwards towards a fixed climax until THE CYCLE REVERSES Performer - Culture & Literature

From this civilisation’s death, another civilisation arises. W.B. Yeats 5. Yeats’s cyclical theory of history While one civilisation’s people are born, live and die; they move towards their own annihilation. From this civilisation’s death, another civilisation arises. The point at which one era’s struggle for death coincides with the next era’s struggle for birth provokes a violent turn of the gyre. Performer - Culture & Literature

5. Gyres ‘A single gyre resembles a funnel, W.B. Yeats 5. Gyres The gyre is one of Yeats’s favourite motifs, based on the idea that history occurs in cycles. ‘A single gyre resembles a funnel, which begins at a fixed point. From this point the spiral grows wider and wider until it reaches its maximum growth. At this climax, the single gyre “begins to retrace its path in the opposite direction.’ Performer - Culture & Literature

W.B. Yeats 6. Yeats’s symbolism To Yeats the symbol has a ‘visionary’ dimension, it offers ‘revelation’. . It has an effective role in shaping both the individual and the collective consciousness. It is not only a device he uses to present his themes. It is a theme in itself, in which truths are embodied, in all their complexity. Performer - Culture & Literature

W.B. Yeats 6. Yeats’s symbolism ‘I can not now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers, whether they are used consciously by the masters of magic, or half-unconsciously by their successors, the poet, the musician and the artist.’ (W.B. Yeats, Magic, 1901) Byzantium symbolises  Unity of Being, in which religious, aesthetic and practical life are one. “And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.” Performer - Culture & Literature

The unchanging, flawless ideal W.B. Yeats 6. Yeats’s symbolism ‘I can not now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers, whether they are used consciously by the masters of magic, or half-unconsciously by their successors, the poet, the musician and the artist.’ (W.B. Yeats, Magic, 1901) The swan symbolises The unchanging, flawless ideal A violent divine force The Wild Swans at Coole Leda and the Swan Performer - Culture & Literature