William Butler Yeats 1865 1939 William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865 -1939) William Butler Yeats.

W. B. Yeats 1. Life • 1865: born in Dublin, Ireland, into a middle-class family belonging to the Protestant minority. • 1890 s: 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. Only Connect. . . New Directions

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. Only Connect. . . New Directions

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 20 th 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. Only Connect. . . New Directions

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 Only Connect. . . New Directions

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”. Only Connect. . . New Directions

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. Only Connect. . . New Directions

W. B. Yeats 5. The Great Wheel Only Connect. . . New Directions

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. Only Connect. . . New Directions

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 Unity of Being, in which religious, aesthetic and practical life are one And therefore I have sailed the [seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. Only Connect. . . New Directions

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 A violent divine force Leda and the Swan Only Connect. . . New Directions