1. William Butler Yeats
( )
William Butler Yeats.

2. W. B. Yeats
1. Life
1865: born in Dublin, Ireland, into a middle-class family belonging to the Protestant minority.
1890s: met Lady Gregory who supported his project regarding the Abbey Theatre.
1893: published a series of essays, The Celtic Twilight, to promote an Irish renaissance.
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3. 1. Life He was a member of the Irish Senate from 1922 to 1928.
W. B. Yeats
1. Life
He was a member of the Irish Senate from 1922 to 1928.
In December 1923 he was the first Irish author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
He died in Menton, France in 1939.
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4. 2. The 3 phases of Yeats’s art
W. B. Yeats
2. The 3 phases of Yeats’s art
The early period  languid and sensual atmospheres of the Romantics and the decadent artists. Use of Irish folklore and influence of the French Symbolists and William Blake.
The middle period (beginning of the 20th century) more modern and flexible style, started to conceive symbols as means to evoke universal myths.
The later period (years of maturity)  creation of his own vision.
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5. 3. Yeats’s vision of history
W. B. Yeats
3. Yeats’s vision of history
Life and all of its phases =
cycles spiralling upwards or downwards towards a fixed climax
the cycle reverses
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6. 4. Gyres A single gyre resembles a funnel,
W. B. Yeats
4. Gyres
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”.
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7. One historical revolution of the wheel takes 2000 years.
W. B. Yeats
5. The Great Wheel
A wheel with twenty-eight spokes representing the twenty-eight phases of the lunar month.
Every civilization passes through all twenty-eight phases of the wheel.
One historical revolution of the wheel takes 2000 years.
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8. W. B. Yeats
5. The Great Wheel
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9. 6. Yeats’s cyclical theory of history
W. B. Yeats
6. Yeats’s cyclical theory of history
While one civilization’s people are born, live, and die, they move towards their own annihilation.
From this civilization’s death, another civilization 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.
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10. in which religious, aesthetic and practical life are one
W. B. Yeats
7. 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
And therefore I have sailed the [seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
Unity of Being,
in which religious, aesthetic and practical life are one
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11. The unchanging, flawless ideal
W. B. Yeats
7. 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
The Wild Swans at Coole OR
Leda and the Swan
A violent divine force
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