Joining the colours by Katharine TYNAN (1914)

I/Biography of the author

Katharine Tynan is an Irish author, born in Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin in eighteen fifty-nine
(1859). She received her education in a Convent: Dominican of St Catherine for 6 years, up until she
was 14yo. She grew up with her eleven siblings. While she was dealing with eye sickness, her adored
sister Mary passed away. She was an active member of the Irish Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society
(ICWSS). She was married to Henry Albert Hinkson, a protestant and they had three children
together, Theobald Henry Hinkson, Giles Aymler Hinkson and Pamela Mary Hinkson.

Katharine tackled several social issues within her articles. They included the treatment metered out to
shop girls, unmarried mothers, infanticide, capital punishment plus the education of the poor. WW1
was an emotional matter for her, something that engaged her daily as both her sons were involved in
military service. She passed away on 2 April 1931 aged 72 years old.

Katharine was a major writer of Irish Literary Renaissance. She produced more than a hundred
novels of social protest plus poetry collections and twelve collections of romantic short stories. She
was considered unique among writers for her personal concern for women, the youth and poor.

Reading
II/Literary analysis
Literary devices:
“As to a wedding day” - simile: satire
“Singing like the lark” - simile
“Out of the mist they stepped-into the mist” - parallelism
“Food for shells and guns” - metaphor
“Glory and grave” - antithesis
“alas” -apostrophe
Lexical fields:
lexical field of excitement: “so gay,” singing, foolish, young, gay, and golden, high heart high
courage, they go as to a wedding day, too carelessly gay --> implies that they do not know where they
are going (to a certain death), blithely
Lexical field of war: into the dark, marching, shells and guns, grave, love cannot save, stepped into
the mist, run, the poor girls
Stanzas (structure etc) : made up of 4 stanzas, 4 lines of 10 syllables each, short sentences at
the end of each stanza
Rythm and rhymes: always ABAB rhymes = rhyme pattern,
III/Meaning of the poem
The poem’s meaning is implied by the lexical field of excitement: it shows that the “young” and
“careless-gay” men do not know what they are going to go through. It is made to denounce the
propaganda which tricks the new soldiers and their families into thinking of war as a good thing. It
exaggerates it to create a ridiculous version of the reality. That poem was published in the middle of
the war and details Irish soldiers joining the British to fight. The text represents the brigade marching
in a parade through the cities/ singing they pass. The author uses simile and metaphor to give us a
picture of how the soldiers arrived. All the poem is an antithesis of the innocence lexical field of the
soldiers against the lexical field of terror of their future experience (ex: singing like the lark => They
go into the dark). Moreover, the tone is solemn and mournful while the brigade is singing. At the end
of the poem, the writher as the reader know that these men cannot escape because they are entering in
the mist.

IV/QUIZ: (kahoot)
What's Katharine TYNAN's nationality?
She's from Ireland, she's Irish.
What causes is Katharine TYNAN defending?
She defends the vote for women, the unmarried mothers, infanticide, the capital punishment and the
education for poorest.
On which context that poem was written?
During the WW1(in the middle)
Why did she use metaphor and simile in the poem?
In order to give us a picture of how the soldiers parade in the streets.
Quote one of the lexical fields of the poem?
The excitement, love, and war.