BBNAN13300 – Close Reading W. B. Yeats
BBNAN13300 – Close Reading
W. B. Yeats
Dr. Michael McAteer
Monday, 16.00-17.30
MS Teams
This seminar examines the work of Ireland’s greatest modern poet, William Butler Yeats, who lived from 1865 to 1939. Not only was Yeats a dominant figure in Irish literature from the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century, he was also recognized as one of the greatest writers internationally in the English-speaking world. As well as a poet, Yeats was an important dramatist and essay writer. In this seminar, you will study his poetry, plays and some of his most influential essays.
Seminar classes:
Week 1, Mon, Feb. 8: Introduction
Week 2, Mon, Feb 15: Poems: ‘The Stolen Child’; ‘To the Rose upon the Rood of Time’
Week 3, Mon, Feb 22: Essay: ‘Magic’; Poems: ‘Fergus and the Druid’; ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’
Week 4, Mon, Mar 1: Cuchulain ‘Heroic’ Plays: On Baile’s Strand; The Green Helmet
Week 5, Thurs, Mar 8: Essay: ‘The Celtic Element in Literature’; Poems: ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, ‘The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland’
Week 6, Mon, Mar 15: Poems: ‘No Second Troy’; ‘Reconciliation’; ‘September 1913’; ‘The Fisherman’
Week 7, Mon, Mar 22 Dance Plays: Calvary, The Cat and the Moon
TERM BREAK: Monday MARCH 29 TO Friday APRIL 09
Week 8, Mon, April 12 Poems: ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’; ‘Sailing to Byzantium’
Week 9, Mon, April 19: Spirit Play: The Words Upon the Window-pane
Week 10, Mon, April 26: Words for Music Perhaps (the ‘Crazy Jane’ poems)
Week 11, Mon, May 3: Review and submission of essays
Week 12, Mon, May 10: Feedback Assessment for Seminar:
25% of your grade for this course is based on your attendance at online seminars and participation in discussion of Yeats’s works. 75% of your grade is based on an essay:
1. Send Dr. McAteer your essay structure/plan by Friday, April 09. Before deciding your essay topic, consult the poems and plays that we will study after the mid-term break in addition to the poems and plays that you have already discussed in seminar. 2. You must include references in your essay to at least three critical studies from PPKE Library dealing with Yeats’s work (see list below). 3. Submit your essay in second-last seminar class on Thursday, May 3.
Essay Titles:
Select one of the titles below for your essay. When writing your essay, follow the guidelines for referencing and bibliography that are provided on the Institute of English and American Studies website, PPKE. Plagiarism will result in an automatic fail, so make sure to present references correctly in your essay. Your essay should be between 2000-2500 words and should be uploaded in MS Teams.
1. Examine the nature of magic in Yeats’s writing.
2. Discuss the theme of heroism in Yeats’s writing.
3. Consider the topics of journey and/or exile in Yeats’s writing.
4. Compare some of the different ways in which Yeats portrays Ireland in his writing.
A selection of critical studies on W. B. Yeats that you can consult in PPKE Library:
All volumes of The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats are available to consult in Piliscsaba campus library. The following books can also be located in the library:
Bertha, Csilla, A drámaíró Yeats (Budapest: Akadémia Könyvtár, 1988).
Cullingford, Elizabeth, Yeats: Poems, 1919-1935 (London: Macmillan, 1994).
Harper, Margaret Mills, Wisdom of Two: The spiritual and literary collaboration of George and W. B. Yeats (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Holdeman, David, and Ben Levitas, ed., W. B. Yeats in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Longenbach, James, Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Longley, Edna, Yeats and modern poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Mahaffey, Vicki, States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and the Irish Experiment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
McAteer, Michael, Standish O’Grady, A.E., Yeats: History, Politics, Culture (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2002).
McAteer, Michael, Yeats and European Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
North, Michael, The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Touhy, Frank, Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1976).
Yeats, W. B., Selected Poetry, Timothy Webb, ed. (London: Penguin, 1991).
Vendler, Helen, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).