Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Lenka Pokorná Celtic Elements in Yeats’s Early Poetry and Their Influence on Irish National Identity Master‘s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph. D. 2012 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author‘s signature I would like to thank my supervisor Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD. for his patient guidance and helpful advice, as well as support and reassurance when I most needed it. I am also grateful to my classmates and friends Petra Králová, Ondřej Harušek and Viktor Dvořák for reading the thesis and for their valuable comments. Great thanks also to my boyfriend, for helping me with the formal structure of the thesis. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 5 2. Theoretical Part......... ........................................................................................................... 7 2.1. Historical background ............................................................................................... 7 2.2. Self-fashioning .......................................................................................................... 19 2.2.1. Epic integrity ................................................................................................... 20 2.2.2. Artificial Self-Fashioning ............................................ …................................19 2.3. Role of Art in Ireland ............................................................................................... 30 3. Analytical Part......... ............................................................................................................ 42 3.1. Otherworld.. .............................................................................................................. 42 3.1.1. Otherworld as a physical place ........................................................................... 45 3.1.2. Otherworld as a realm beyond senses ................................................................. 54 3.1.3. General motifs in the poetry on the Otherworld ................................................. 64 3.2. Otherwordly beings ................................................................................................. 68 3.2.1. Classification and description of the otherworldly beings .................................. 68 3.2.2. Themes of freedom, desire and uneasiness ......................................................... 73 3.2.3. Motifs connected the Sidhe ................................................................................. 78 3.3. Transcendence ........................................................................................................... 84 3.3.1. Death .................................................................................................................... 84 3.3.2. Kidnappers ........................................................................................................... 88 3.3.3. Art and love .......................................................................................................... 91 3.3.4. Metaphor of transcendence of the nation ............................................................. 94 4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 96 Works cited ............................................................................................................................... 98 1. Introduction William Butler Yeats certainly ranks among the greatest poets of the 20th century and is closely associated with the Irish Literary Revival, as a poet, dramatist, and to an extent, as a fiction writer. Being so famous a poet, there is no doubt that heaps of books have been written on him, viewing his work from many different angles. What this thesis attempts to do is to offer a little more insight into his early work, which is paid much less critical attention to, in comparison with his mature poems he was awarded a Nobel Prize for. The thesis aims to present a concise picture of young Yeats set against the broader cultural context of the late 19th century Ireland and to analyse his contribution into the process of self-fashioning of the Irish as a nation. It also explores this process itself – two different strategies are employed when creating a national identity: re- creation of the ancient epic integrity; and defining the nation in negative terms, as ―not- English‖. These two strategies overlap in the use of mythology and folklore as a cornerstone of the self-fashioning process. Yeats, too, leaned on mythology, ancient legends and folklore, in order to avail of them in his poetry as a vehicle to lead the nation towards a metaphorical transcendence. The main question posed by this thesis is: ―How does he achieve that?‖ To answer this question, the analytical part discusses the recurring Celtic elements in his work, in particular focuses on the themes and motifs connected to these elements. Yeats employs certain motifs repeatedly and the thesis will analyse these very motifs, in order to recognize in what ways Yeats uses them to influence the Irish national consciousness. These motifs are, the thesis argues, tied to mythological and folkloric themes, as well as to topical themes related to life in the 19th century Ireland, which enables them to influence the readers on various levels. 5 The late 19th century was a transitory period in general – the turn of the 20th century was at hand, Modernism was gradually replacing the Victorian period. However, the prospect of change was in Ireland even more immediate than elsewhere; Ireland was hoping to transcend its own colonial limitations and, in the coming century, become a free nation. For this reason, the theme of transcendence is given special attention in the thesis, focusing on motifs such as the Otherworld, fairies and the depiction of transcendence itself, as rooted in folkore and mythology. As the thesis is focused on Yeats‘s earlier work, various poems from the period between 1886 and 1900 are analysed;1 mostly taken from the first three collections of poems: Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), Rose (1893) and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)2. Furthermore, the thesis deals with two plays, taking into consideration the aesthetic beauty of their language and style, they can be analysed alongside the poetry as long dramatic poems. What is, finally, necessary to say is that this thesis leans heavily on primary sources, which makes the view of the period and the ongoing social and cultural processes coloured through Yeats‘s personal accounts. However, historic accuracy is not the primary goal; rather the depiction of the mystical world Yeats created in his poetry. 1 Unless stated differently, all the poems are taken from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Wordsworth Editions Ltd.. Pagination is not stated in the parenthetical reference, only the line numbers. 2 In the Collected Poems, The Wanderings of Oisín is set separate in the end of the book and the first collection roughly corresponds to the now known The Crossways (The 1889 Poems were republished and renamed in 1895 with some minor changes and exclusions of various poems Yeats no longer found suitable for his purposes). 6 2. Theoretical Part 2.1. Historical background When speaking about Irish history, many people tend to see it through works of literature rather than through detached historical analyses. This may be the result of the strivings of 19th century nationalist politicians who sought to create a counter-culture that would contrast with the existing Unionist elite, by producing mass romantic literature (The Oxford Companion to Irish History - OCH 320) which, according to Yeats, spoke ―out of a people to a people‖ (Selected Criticism 256). Further, this literature was seen as the genuine history which has a ―privileged access to Irishness‖, while history, in the strict sense, was seen as an Anglo-Irish colonial imposture (OCH 320). Alongside the Romantic Movement throughout Europe, in Ireland cultural nationalism was also being promoted, by a group of nationalist writers and politicians who were labelled ―the Young Irelanders‖ in 1844. Among their chief leaders were Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy, all of whom remained influential figures throughout the rest of the century. They ―resolved that it is expedient to establish Reading-rooms in the Parishes of Ireland‖ (Davis 242); and, although the intellectual activities of these societies and clubs ―were often narrow and ill informed‖ (OCH 381), some of these Young Ireland Societies survived the suppression of the Young Ireland Movement, as such, when they attempted an unsuccessful rebellion in 1848. By the end of the 19th century, they operated as ―centres of nationalist activity‖ (OCH 381) which preserved the legacy of the Young Irelanders, whose chief merit was in passing the romantic sense of Ireland to the following generations of nationalists (OCH 603). Thomas Davis essentially laid the foundation-stone of the later Irish 7 Renaissance – ―he contrasted the philistinism and gradgrindery of England with the superior idealism and imagination of Ireland‖ (Kiberd 22). In an essay published in The Nation, a newspaper