W. B.

YEATS
(1865-1939)

Ms. FATIMA SALEEM

DEPARTMENT of ENGLISH
 Modernism and Yeats
• The term is used to identify new and distinctive feature in the:
 Subjects
Concepts
Form
Style
 Life
• Born in Dublin, Ireland
• Use of Irish mythology and folklore
• In 1923, he was awarded with Nobel Prize in literature
• founder of the Abbey Theatre, the greatest modern poet in English
• He is a symbolist poet.
• By nature, he was a dreamer, a thinker, who fell under the spell of the folk-lore and
superstitious references.
• He was realistic poet though his early poetry was not realistic.
• He felt himself a stranger in the world of technology and rationalism.
 Characteristics of Yeats’ poetry
• Obscurity • Stark Naked Brutality
• Occultism • Bluntness
• Mysticism • Time
• Irish mythology • Nature
• Use of Symbolism • Binary opposites
• Theory of Mask • Relation between art and politics
• Juxtaposition • The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History
• Pessimism • The Transition from Romanticism to
Modernism
• Humanism
• Destruction
 Irish Literature and Yeats
• As Irish literature moved into the 20 th century, an interest revived in Celtic myth and
legend.
• Inspired with national identity and cultural individuality.
• Writers became more confident in their own ground, place, and speech, expressing
themselves in English and Irish.
• Struggle for Irish nationhood and the period between the two world wars
• Rediscovery of myth and legends
• Many poets contributed to the Irish Renaissance.
 Phases in Poetry of Yeats
• His poetry stretches across the whole period of the late Victorian and Early Modern ages.
• Yeats’s poetry undergoes marked changes.
• His poetry was first published in 1885 and he continued writing until his death in 1939.
• There is three main stages to Yeats’s development as a poet.
• The first phase – associated with the Aesthetic movement of the 1890s
• The second phase – dominated by his commitment to Irish nationalism.
• Search of a consistently simpler, popular, and more accessible style.
• More involved in public nationalist issues
• More concerned with the politics of the modern Irish state.
 Phases in Poetry of Yeats
• Recognized that the cause of violence, disorder and repression are complex and have to be
confronted and understood.
• In his poem The Second Coming (1921) – a chilling vision of impending death and dissolution.
It contains the famous lines:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
• Terror and fear of anarchy
• “A terrible beauty is born” Terror and beauty are contraries/paradox – of life
• Yeats developed an elaborate symbolic system which was private to him.
 Phases in Poetry of Yeats
• In the final phase of his career, Yeats reconciles elements from his earlier periods
into a mature lyricism.
• Writes about the eternity of art.
• The later poems explore contrasts between physical and spiritual dimensions to life,
between sensuality and rationality, between turbulence and calm.
• He creates a modern idiom for poetry.
• Merging formal and colloquial styles.
• Traditional forms and direct expression of a personal self both.
 Uses of Symbols in Yeats’ poetry
• In Yeats’ poetry generally symbols are of two kinds
1. Traditional
2. Personal
• “Rose” is both a traditional as well as a personal symbol
• “Rose”, “Swan”, and “Helen” are key- symbols in Yeats poetry.
• Yeats’ use of symbol is complex and rich. 
• Unique poet
• At the same time, traditional and modern poet
• Started his poetic career as a romantic poet
• Yeats early poetry collapsed in his later poetry
 Belongingness
• Yeats' long and influential career spanned a time of enormous political change.
• A visionary poet of huge imagination and technical virtuosity
• Poet of love, lore and land
• Maintained his cultural roots, featuring Irish legends and heroes in many of his poems and
plays.
• famous patriot
• He belonged to the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority that had controlled the economic,
political, social, and cultural life of Ireland since at least the end of the seventeenth century.
 Yeats’s Works
1. Among School Children (written in 1926, published in 1928)
2. Second Coming (Written in 1919, published in 1920)
3. Easter 1916 (1916)