Irlandeaza Curs

7/27/2019 Irlandeaza Curs

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Literatura Irlandeza

IntroductionIrish LiteraturePart One is a survey of the historical evolution of the Irish society and culture,

with a focus on some representative moments in the literature of the nineteenth century and the

beginning of the twentieth century. A historical survey of Ireland is presented as a starting point,continuing with an analysis of some significant cultural concepts like the stage Irishman,

stereotypes or the Celtic Other. The course draws attention to the peculiar position of Irish

writers like Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and J. M. Synge and their contribution to thedevelopment of a national literature and cultural identity. The moment of the Literary Revival is

treated in several units as it is considered to be central both to the political and the cultural

construction of Ireland.

Given the peculiar context and history, some attention is paid to the perception of the Irishculture from a postcolonial perspective, which explains the specific themes and approaches of

major works. Nevertheless there is a moderate use of the postcolonial theory, given the special

position of Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. Therefore some of the topics will be

approached from other theoretical standpoints as well, with a view to enlarging the possibilitiesof understanding one of the most creative cultures in the world.

Course ObjectivesIrish LiteraturePart One aims at making students familiar with the most significant

moments in the history of Irish Literature towards the end of the nineteenth century

and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is designed for the Distance Learning

programme of the Faculty of Letters, department of RomanianEnglish, as anelective course in the second year.

After completing this course, the students will be able to:

Identify key moments in the history of the Irish society and culture; Identify major writers and their works; Interpret literary texts from a postcolonial, psychoanalytical, feminist or

structuralist perspective;

Compare literary works, motifs and devices Write an essay on one of the topics indicated.

Preliminary Requests.

ResourcesFor the understanding of this course and the successful performance of the tasks of

each unit no special skills or previous knowledge are necessary, except for somebackground in literary theory acquired during highschool and the Romanian

literature courses or Theory of Literature.

Course StructureThe Course in Irish Literature, Part One, is structured in two modules. The firstmodule contains three units, giving a broad historical survey and focusing on the

significance of the Literary Revival, including its greatest representative W. B.

Yeats. The second module contains two units, each dealing with a major Irish

playwright, Oscar Wilde and John M. Synge.Each unit starts with an introduction and a presentation of objectives, followed by

some general considerations. In some cases significant fragments from the works are


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given in the form of examples and some tasks are suggested. The units end with a

summary and a test.

At the end of each of the two modules there is an assignment which is compulsoryfor graduating the course.

Average Study Time

The average study time for the units is three hours, including the End of unit tests.EvaluationThe final grade for the course will include a test with 2-3 general questions,

amounting to 70%, and the answers to the Assessment tasks representing 30%.

UNIT ONE: A H ISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SURVEY OF I RELAND

___________________________________________________________________________

Contents:1.1. Introduction

1.2. Competences1.3 The Early Stages

1.4. The Conflict and the Invasions From the East

1.4.1. Example1.4.2. To Do1.5. The Sectarian Conflict

1.5.1.Example

1.6. The Twentieth Century and the New Irish State 1.7.Summary

1.8. End of Unit Test

UNIT ONE: A HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SURVEY OF IRELAND

1.1. IntroductionIn this unit the main stages and events in the history of Ireland are viewed in

connection to the cultural effects and the complex political background that created

todays unique Irish context. The focus is on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,as they are also the most culturally productive periods and in which the Irish identity

was shaped and represented.

1.2. CompetencesOn completion of UNIT ONE students will be able to identify the main stages in the

development of the Irish nation and the formation of todays Republic of Ireland.

They will understand historical processes and sources of conflict and will become

familiar with dates, places and personalities that are significant in the history of theisland.

Study time for UNIT ONE: 3 hours

1.3. The Early Stages

Ireland had an ancient civilisation dating back from the Mesolithic Age over nine thousand yearsago. It underwent continuous transformations as people from Europe moved westward, but it was

never invaded by the Romans or by Germanic tribes like most European territories. This enabled

the Gaelic civilisation, Christianised in the fifth century, to flourish in the early Middle Ages.Between the ninth and the twelfth centuries, at a time when there was hardly any coherent

manifestation of local cultures in the territories of the present-day Western European countries,

Irish monks travelled throughout Europe spreading Christianity and the fruit of the Irishcivilisation. The illuminated manuscript of the Book of Kells, today exhibited at the museum of


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Trinity College, Dublin, stands proof of the advanced artistic skills and tastes of the Irish in the

ninth century.

The Book of Kells is a stunningly beautiful manuscript containing the Four Gospels. It isIrelands most precious medieval artifact, and is generally considered the finest surviving

illuminated manuscript to have been produced in medieval Europe. The Gospels are written in

Latin, which was the language of the religious sermons.The Book of Kells was written on vellum (calfskin), which was time-consuming to prepareproperly but made for an excellent, smooth writing surface. 680 individual pages (340 folios)

have survived, and of them only two lack any form of artistic ornamentation. In addition to

incidental character illuminations, there are entire pages that are primarily decoration, includingportrait pages, carpet pages and partially decorated pages with only a line orso of text. As

many as ten different colors were used in the illuminations, some of them rare and expensive

dyes that had to be imported from the continent. The workmanship is so fine that some of the

details can only be clearly seen with a magnifying glass. The great number of drawings can beaccounted for by the fact that the book was exhibited in church during the Sunday sermon, which

was in Latin, so that the illiterate people could look at the images representing the respective

Gospel and understand the story.The Book of Kells was probably produced in a monastery on the Isle of Iona, Scotland, in the

early 8th century. After a Viking raid the book was moved to Kells, Ireland, sometime in the 9th

century. It was stolen in the 11th century, at which time its cover was torn off and it was thrown

into a ditch. The cover, which most likely included gold and gems, has never been found, and thebook suffered some water damage; but otherwise it is extraordinarily well-preserved.

1.4. The Conflict and the Invasions From the EastJust like the British territories, Ireland attracted Viking raids from the end of the eighth century,and then Norman invaders, who settled especially in the East and the fertile lowlands of the

South. Thus the North, called Ulster, remained the least affected province and continued to keep

its Celtic heritage. Being an independent territory until the sixteenth century, it was soon

perceived as a threat by the developing power of England.By the time Elizabeth came to the throne in 1588, much of Ireland had been recovered, but

Ulster largely remained beyond the Crowns grasp. Heading a formidable coalition of all the

Gaelic lords of the north, Hugh ONeill of Tyrone for several years inflicted severe defeats onthe English in the 1590s. Eventually, due to intensified attacks, ONeill had to capitulate in 1603.

The final stages of this conquest were terrible: by burning corn and seizing cattle the English

commanders caused mass starvation in Ulster and left bitter memories among the survivors. Thiswas just the beginning of the continuous anomalous state of the Irish people under the British

rule, which was to last until the beginning of the 20th

century.

The settlement of Protestant English and Scots in Ireland starting with 1603 marked the

beginning of the colonisation of the island, called The Plantation of Ulster. The incomingBritish who took over the lands never felt secure in Ireland and they could never manage their

estates without Irish help. On the other hand the dispossessed Irish resented the intrusion of

settlers with an alien language, alien customs, and alien religion. This led to political instability

and rebellions, which were suppressed in blood by the British troops, the most terrible examplebeing the repression led by Oliver Cromwell. It remained in the folk memory as one of the

bloodiest episodes in the Irish history. Later in the same 17the century, during the Catholic King

James II other two battles were added to the black pages of history, namely the battle of Boynein 1690 and the one at Aughrim in 1991, when seven thousand Irishmen were killed in one


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afternoon. Even the contemporary national Irish poet Seamus Heaney dedicated a long poem to

the Battle of Boyne and its devastating effects on the Irish psyche.

Starting with the 18th

century, Ireland benefited from the effects of the Industrial Revolution anddeveloped some local industries, especially linen, as well as trade. The flourishing of navigation

also contributed to the development of ports such as Belfast and Newry. As the sectarian

conflicts started to aggravate, the Crown intensified its armed interventions, while alternatingmilitary suppression with political actions, which culminated with the bribing of the weak IrishParliament and its dissolution in 1800. This was the moment when the total Union with Britain

started.

Example 1.4.1:Here is the way in which the historian Jonathan Bardon describes the 19

thcentury

Irish history:

The Union: Poverty or Prosperi ty?In the eighteenth century, Dublin was the secondlargest city in the British

Empire. After the Union the citys textile industry found it increasingly difficult to

compete with the powerdriven mills and factories of northern England. For the

same reason the domestic linen industry in midUlster and west Cork, and thedomestic woollen industry throughout the rest of Ireland, suffered catastrophic

decline. A rapidly rising population depended ever more heavily on what theoverworked soil could produce. The potato, the staple food of about half the

inhabitants, was destroyed by blight in the 1840s; about a million people died from

hunger and famine fever, and about million people emigrated.

There was a flight from the land, and those without the resources to go abroadoften ended up in Belfast, which became the fastestgrowing urban centre in the

United Kingdom. At first growth depended on cotton produced by steam and water

powered machines. Finding it difficult to compete with Manchester, the mill

owners transferred to the power production of linen yarn in the 1830s and 1840s

and the power weaving of cloth in the 1850s and 1860s. During the American CivilWar (when supplies of cotton wool were closed off) Belfast became the world

centre of the linen industry.Belfast became a city in 1888 (it was then the largest in Ireland), and by 1900 it

was one of the great cities of the Empire, with the biggest shipyard in the world

launching the largest ships in the world, the biggest linen mill, the biggest tobaccoactory, the biggest tea machinery works, the biggest ropeworks, the biggest

aerated waters factory, and the biggest gasometer in the worldbut it was a city

with severe problems.

1.4.2. After reading the fragment above, answer the following questions:1. What were, according to Bardon, the alternatives for the poor people of

Ireland in the nineteenth century?b. What was the greatest disaster for the Irish in this century?

c. How did Belfast become known throughout the world?1. Did the industrial development eradicate severe poverty in the late 19th and

early 20th

century?

1.5. TheSectarian ConflictThe development of Belfast in terms of number of inhabitants and economy went hand in handwith the clustering of its population in separate districts for the (mostly) British Protestants and


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for the Catholics. These distinct ghettos were separated by invisible frontiers and became the

scene of ferocious sectarian rioting. They continued in the 20th

century, in spite of the increase

of the Protestant population to 75 per cent, and the national question continued to grow inimportance.

The Irish Catholics intensified their fight for independence and the abolishment of the Act of

Union especially under the leadership of Daniel OConnell. This contributed to severalParliamentary reforms in 1832, 1867 and 1872, which allowed a larger participation for therepresentatives of the Irish people and secret vote. By 1886 there were 100 Irish MPs, out of

which 80 were nationalists seeking Home Rule, that is a Parliament in Dublin but with Ireland

as part of the British Empire. The Home Rule Bill was finally rejected by the House of Lords,after passing the Commons.

Towards the end of the 19th

century the divide grew stronger between the nationalist Irish, who

aimed at an independent Ireland, and the Unionists who were afraid of losing their privileges.

The conflict was not only political, but also cultural, expressed in various manifestations of theso-called Gaelic Revival. At the same time the political representation of Ireland at the

Westminster Parliament grew in importance with the voice of Parnell, whose speeches had a

destabilising effect on the British rule over Ireland. Although Parnell did not manage to obtain areal victory, his contribution to building the expectations and future course of action of the Irish

patriots was undeniable.

One of the most impactful cultural forms of voicing the desire for independence was the speech

made by Douglas Hyde in 1892 in front of the National Literary Society in Dublin, marking thebeginning of The Literary Revival. Known under the title of The Necessity For De-Anglicising

Ireland, the speech reveals the anxieties about the survival of the Irish spirit and the difficulties

in re-constructing it.Here are some fragments from Douglas Hydes famous address:

Example 1.5.1.

THE NECESSITY FOR DEANGLICISING IRELAND (1892)

When we speak of The Necessity for De Anglicising the Irish Nation, we meanit, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that

would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, andhastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English,

simply because it is English.

This is a question which most Irishmen will naturally look at from a National pointof view, but it is one which ought also to claim the sympathies of every intelligent

Unionist, and which, as I know, does claim the sympathy of many.

If we take a birds eye of our island today, and compare it with what it used to be,we must be struck by the extraordinary fact that the nation which was once, as

every one admits, one of the most classically learned and cultured nations in

Europe, is now one of the least so; how one of the most reading and literarypeoples has become one of the least studious and most unliterary, and how thepresent art products of one of the quickest, most sensitive, and most artistic races

on earth are now only distinguished for their hideousness.

I shall endeavor to show that this failure of the Irish people in recent times has been

largely brought about by the race diverging during this century from the right path,and ceasing to be Irish without becoming English. I shall attempt to show that with

the bulk of the people this change took place quite recently, much more recently


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than most people imagine, and is, in fact, still going on. I should also like to callattention to the illogical position of men who drop their own language to speakEnglish, of men who translate their euphonious Irish names into English

monosyllables, of men who read English books, and know nothing about Gaelic

literature, nevertheless protesting as a matter of sentiment that they hate the country

which at every hands turn they rush to imitate. I wish to show you that in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away

with a light heart the best claim which we have upon the worlds recognition of us

as a separate nationalityIt has always been very curious to me how Irishsentiment sticks in this halfway househow it continues to apparently hate the

English, and at the same time continues to imitate them; how it continues to

clamour for recognition as a distinct nationality, and at the same time throws awaywith both hands what would make it so. If Irishmen only went a little farther they

would become good Englishmen in sentiment also. Butillogical as it appears

there seems not the slightest sign or probability of their taking that step. It is the

curious certainty that come what nay Irishmen will continue to resist English rule,

even though it should be for their good, which prevents many of our nation frombecoming Unionists upon the spot. It is a fact, that although they adopt English

habits and copy England in ever way, the great bulk of Irishmen and Irishwomenover the world are known to be filled with a dull, everabiding animosity against

her, andright or wrongto grieve when she prospers, and joy when she is hurt.

Such movements as Young Irelandism, Fenianism, Land Leagueism, and

Parliamentary obstruction seem always to again their sympathy and support. It isust because there appears no earthly chance of their becoming good members of

the Empire that I urge that they should not remain in the anomalous position they

are in, but since they absolutely refuse to become the one thing, that they becomethe other; cultivate what they have rejected, and build up an Irish nation on Irish

lines.But you ask, why should we wish to make Ireland more Celtic than it iswhy

should we deAnglicise it at all?I answer because the Irish race is a present in a most anomalous position, imitating

England and yet apparently hating it. How can it produce anything good in

literature, art, on instructions as long as it actuated by motives so contradictory?Besides, I believe it is our Gaelic past which, though the Irish races does not

recognize it just at present, is really at the bottom of the Irish heart, and prevents us

becoming citizens of the Empire, as, I think, can be easily proved.To say that Ireland has not prospered under English rule is simply a truism; all the

world admits it, England does not deny it. But the English retort is ready. You have

not prospered, they say, because you would not settle down contentedly, like theScotch, and from part of the Empire. Twenty years of good, resolute,grandfatherly government, said a well known Englishman, will solve the Irish

question. He possibly made the period too short, but let us suppose this. Let us

suppose for a momentwhich is impossiblethat there were to arise a series of

Cromwells in England for the space of one hundred years, able administrators ofthe Empire, careful rulers of Ireland, developing to the utmost our national

resources, whilst they unremittingly stamped out every spark of national feeling,


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making Ireland a land of wealth and factories, whilst they extinguished everythought and every idea that was Irish, and left us, at last, after a hundred years ofgood government, fat, wealthy, and populous, but with all our characteristics gone,

whit every external that at present differentiates us from the English lost or

dropped; all our Irish names of places and people turned into English names; the

Irish language completely extinct; the Os and the Macs dropped; our Irishintonation changed, as far as possible, by English schoolmasters into something

English; our history no longer remembered or taught; the names of our rebels and

martyrs blotted out; our battlefields and traditions forgotten; the fact that we werenot of Saxon origin dropped out of sight and memory, and let me now put the

questionNow many Irishmen are there who would purchase material prosperity

at such a price? It is exactly such a question as this and the answer to if that showsthe difference between the English and Irish race. Nine Englishmen out of ten

would jump to make the exchange, and I as firmly believe that nine Irishmen out of

ten would indignantly refuse it.

So much for the greatest stroke of all in our Anglicisation, the loss of our language.

I have often heard people thank God that if the English gave us nothing else theygave us at least their language. In this way they put a bold face upon the matter,

and pretend that the Irish language is not worth knowing, and has no literature. Butthe Irish language is worth knowing, or why would the greatest philologists of

Germany, France, and Italy be emulously studying it, and it does possess a

literature, or why would a German savant have mate the calculation that the books

written in Irish between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, and still extant,would fill a thousand octavo volumes.

I have no Hesitation at all in saying that every Irish-feeling Irishman, who hates the

reproach of West-Britonism, should set himself to encourage the efforts which arebeing made to keep alive our once great national tongue. The losing of it is our

greatest blow, and the sorest stroke that the rapid Anglicisation of Ireland hasinflicted upon us. In order to de-Anglicise ourselves we must at once arrest the

decay of the language. We must bring pressure upon our politicians not to snuff itout by their tacit discouragement merely because they do not happen themselves to

understand it. We must arouse some spark of patriotic inspiration among the

peasantry who still use the language, and put an end to the shameful state offeeling-a thousand-tongued reproach to our leaders and statesmen-which makes

young men and women blush and hang their heads when overheard speaking their

own language.We can, however, insist, and we shall insist if Home Rule be carried, that the Irish

language, which so many foreign scholars of the first calibre find so worthy of

study, shall be placed on a par with-or even above-Greek, Latin, and modernlanguages, in all examinations held under the Irish Government. We can also insist,and we shall insist, that in those baronies where the children speak Irish, Irish shall

be taught, and that Irish-speaking schoolmasters, petty sessions clerks, and even

magistrates be appointed in Irish-speaking districts. If all this were done, it should

not be very difficult, with the aid of the foremost foreign scholars, to bring about atone of thought which would make it disgraceful for an educated Irishman-

especially of the old Celtic race, MacDermotts, OConnors, OSullivans,


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MacCarthys, ONeills-to be ignorant of his own language-would make it at least asdisgraceful as for an educated Jew to be quite ignorant of Hebrew.

1.6. The Twentieth Century and the New Irish StateAlthough the Unionists had the support of the Conservative Party at Westminster and weredecided to fight by all means to stop Home Rule, by 1914 it became imminent. In 1913 the

Ulster Volunteer Force was formed, and in April 1914 a huge consignment of German arms wassmuggled in. However, the government reconsidered the act and proposed an amendment whichallowed nine counties of Ulster to opt out of the Home Rule, which marked the partition of

Ireland. During the Great War (1914-1918), in spite of some economic development due to the

needs for the war machine, the actions for independence continued. A great rebellion took placein Dublin on Easter Monday 1916, organised by the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood. It was

quickly repressed and its leaders executed in public. The separatist party Sinn Fein (meaning

ourselves) started its activity in 1917 and aimed at full independence. Nevertheless the 1918

elections did not bring any significant change and it was only in 1920 that Home Rule becamelaw for two thirds of the island (the twenty six southern counties) with local parliaments in

Dublin and Belfast and some representatives in the Westminster Parliament. The Ulster

Unionists had obtained what they wanted, namely six counties in Ulster remained under Britishrule, with a parliament in Belfast. After some more IRA campaigns that were defeated, a trucewas agreed in 1921 and in December the Anglo-Irish treaty was signed, recognising the Irish

Free State (made up of the twenty-six southern counties) with a status similar to the dominion in

Canada. Northern Ireland also had its own parliament, but remained subservient to London. Herethe fights between the separatista and the unionists continued and intensified in the next years,

making hundreds of victims on both sides. In the two biggest cities, Londonderry and Belfast

there were numerous riots, shootings and assassinations, and the governments response was thecreation of an armed police force. The situation in Northern Ireland remained problematic, as one

third of the population, the Irish Catholics, were now ruled by their historical enemies, while the

Protestant majority feared that the situation could be threatened if Dublin or even London

decided to help the Irish. Economically, Northern Ireland also suffered an acute depressionbetween the two world wars due to the loss of some international markets. The human loss of

Belfast in the World War II was very great, but the post-war British government policies

supported the economic growth which resulted in vast improvement in educational, health care,and living standards. The partition of Ireland was reinforced with the 1985 Anglo-Irish

Agreement and the 1993 Joint Declaration, by which the British government repeated its position

with respect to the Irish issue, namely that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United

Kingdom as long as the majority there wished in to be.The civil strife in Northern Ireland registered periods of intensity, like the turmoils and killings

of 1968-1969 in Derry and Belfast, the January 1972 so-called Bloody Sunday, when

paratroopers killed thirteen men in Derry during a demonstration and the terrible IRA atrocities

that followed. The British government sought to control the violence andin co-operation withthe Dublin governmentto find a constitutional compromise, which included the sharing of

power by Protestant and Catholic elected representatives. All the attempts failed, being opposed

by the unionists, and violence continued at a high level. On 21 July 1972 or The BloodyFriday, the IRA detonated twenty bombs in Belfast within one hour, Earl Mountbatten and two

boys were killed in County Sligo, then eighteen soldiers in 1979. The 1970s were probably the

bloodiest decade in the whole century, and the protests continued by IRA prisoners, culminatingwith ten of them starving themselves to death, attracted public sympathy in the Catholic


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community. That is why some constitutional solutions were sought, including cross-border

cooperation and the consultative role of the Republic of Ireland. Between 1985-1990 Ulster

opposed this policy, but the cooperation between Dublin and London on security matterscontinued and the Sinn Feins electoral support of the community declined.

Violence increased again in the early 1990s as the Provisional IRA got large consignments of

arms and explosives from Libya, and loyalist paramilitaries got weapons from South Africa. Allthe attempts at reaching new agreements, including talks with Sinn Fein leaders, failed, due toincessant killings on both sides. On 15 December 1993 John Major and Albert Reynolds

launched the Joint Declaration at Downing Street, which reaffirmed the constitutional guarantee

to Northern Ireland, stated that Britain no longer had any selfish strategic or economic interestin Northern Ireland, acknowledged the right of self-determination but subject to the consent of a

Northern majority, and held out the prospect of exploratory talks with Sinn Fein three months

after an agreement to stop the IRA campaign of violence.

After 1995 the level of violence decreased, and many positive signs appeared. In the 1990s theRepublic of Ireland became the economic Celtic Lion of Europe, with the greatest growth rate

in the EU, and the North started on a growing trend as well.

1.7. Summary:The Irish civilisation is the result of a long process of development starting with the

prehistoric age and flourishing long before other European territories. It was a Celtic

civilisation whose remains today include the language, some legends and artifacts.

Starting with the seventeenth century most of the islands territory was taken over byBritish settlers and gradually Ireland lost its political independence while its economic

position was very backward. The struggle for independence intensified at the end of

the nineteenth century and in 1922 the Free Irish State came into being. This was notthe end of the conflict, as tension grew in the northern counties that continued to be

part of the United Kingdom.

1.8 End of UNIT TEST1. What is The Plantation of Ulster?2. What is the oldest manuscript in Ireland?

3. Describe the social and economic situation of the Irish in the nineteenth century.

4. What was Parnells contribution to raising awareness about the situation of theIrish people both inside and outside the country?

5. What was the main idea of Douglas Hydes speech entitled The Necessity of

De-Anglicising Ireland?6. When was the Irish Free State set up?

7. Mention three moments in the escaladation of the conflict in Northers Ireland.

UNIT TWO: THE CELTIC OTHER AND THE STAGE IRISMAN2.1. Introduction2.2. Competences

2.3. The Celtic Civilisation

2.4. The Celts and the Perception of Their Culture

2.5. The Literary Revival: Reconstructing Irishness2.6. The Abbey Theatre

2.7. Summary

2.8. End of Unit Test

UNIT TWO: THE CELTIC OTHER AND THE STAGE IRISMAN


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2.1. IntroductionThis unit deals with issues of Irish identity and its cultural representations. The

impact of the Celtic civilisation is briefly stated and the stereotypes about the Irishare viewed historically and with a postcolonial focus. The emphasis in the second

half of the unit is on the importance of the Literary Revival as a cultural

reconstruction of the nation that led to the political construction that followed.2.2. CompetencesOn completion of UNIT TWO students will be able to better understand the essence

of the Irish identity in connection with its Celtic past and with the outside

representations of Irishness. They will become familiar with the cultural movementcalled Revival and its most important representatives.

Study time for UNIT TWO: 2 hours

2.3. The Celtic CivilisationThe Indo-European populations known as Celts, probably originating from central Europe,started settling in Britain in the 5

thcentury BC and in Ireland in the 3

rdcentury BC, where they

found a culture that had existed for some 2000 years. The testimonies of classical authors like

Tacitus are the most important sources for this civilization, which extended from Ireland to AsiaMinor, and which survived in Ireland more than in other continental territories due to the

isolation of Ireland which prevented a Roman invasion in the 1st century AD. It even outlasted

the strong attacks of the Vikings in the 9th

and the Normans in the 12th

centuries AD. Plato,

Aristotle and other Greek historians, made comments of the habits of Celtic tribes, like theirvaliance in chariot battles or the habit of fighting naked, their fondness of speaking in riddles or

their love of learning.

In spite of their ethnic diversity, the Celts can be said to share a common culture, reflected intheir social and political institutions, religious beliefs and languages. Celtic religion associated

deities with rivers, wells and trees (thus the oak was sacred and there were animal Gods).

Celtic languages were located historically in southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, northern

Italy, Spain, France and on the islands of Britain and Ireland. They were known as Gaulish inFrance, Celtiberian in Spain, and in Britain the languages surviving to the present: Gaelic in the

form of Irish and Scottish and Welsh and Breton. Migrations in the ancient world brought

Celtic languages in the Danube valley and even to Asia Minor, where they are testified in the 4th

century AD.

For the past 2000 years the Celtic languages have been threatened by the pressures of Germanic

and Latin languages, which led to the extinction of the Continental Celtic language, and even inBritain and Ireland, they survived in very limited territories. Welsh, with about half a million

people, is probably the best preserved. Scottish Gaelic has practically died out on the main island

but survived in the Hebrides. In Ireland, although nearly one million people declared themselves

as speakers of Irish at a census, as a community language it is still spoken by very few people inthe westernmost territories and in some smaller islands.

2.4. The Celts and the Perception of Their CultureIn order to understand the culture and characteristics of the Irish people, it is necessary to

confront two different perspectives: one from the outside, loaded with stereotypes andrepresenting the image created along the centuries by the British neighbours, who defined

themselves in opposition with the Celtic Other, and the inside perspective, the way in which

the Celtic spirit is reflected in the cultural productions of the populations that lived on the Irishterritory, and, more recently, by the Irish writers themselves.


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Mathew Arnold, an English poet-critic and Oxford Professor from 1857, was among the first

scholars to study Celtic culture and language, as demonstrated by his lectures On the Study of

Celtic Literature (1867) and his famous anthropological workCulture and Anarchy (1869). Heregarded the Celtic psyche as essentially feminine, lacking the pragmatic spirit and steadfast

powers of the Saxons, but Arnold considered that a combination of the two dispositions could be

beneficial for the British culture. While Arnolds views may be considered as justifying thepolitical subordination of the Irish, it also contributed to the emergence of the Literary Revival inthe last two decades of the 19

thcentury, providing the Irish with reasons for taking pride in the

highly imaginative nature of Irish literature.

The stereotypes about the Irish are epitomized in the expression the stage Irishman, usuallyreferring to both characters in fiction and in real life and emphasizing or distorting national

characteristics. Most often the presentation of the stage Irishman was meant to amuse audiences

by exaggerating certain features. Thus the Irish were presented as boastful, garrulous, unreliable,

hard-drinking, belligerent and cowardly at the same time, illogical, uneducated, using thedistinctive Hiberno-English dialect which was neither English nor Irish. The usual positions in

which the Irish were represented were those of household servants, hucksters, fortune-hunters or

soldiers. Irish characters can be found in Shakespeares plays, the best known of these beingCaptain Macmorris inHenry V, but the first stereotype stage-Irish appears after the Restoration

of the English monarchy (end of 17th

century). The growth of a patriotic movement in Ireland

towards the end of the 18th

century led to increasing challenges and even protests against such

stereotype representations. At around 1900 there were vehement protests in Ireland, such as theone caused by John Millington Synges play The Playboy of the Western World, considered to

present a false negative image of the Irish peasantry. During the 20th

century playwrights tried to

avoid trivializing Irish characters, and both audiences and critics had a continuous vigilanceagainst stage-Irishness in any form. Occasional manifestations of racial caricature in plays or

films were met with resentment and protest.

One of the most outstanding voices in creating a less biased representation of the Irish and

actively engaged in the cultural de-colonisation of his country is Declan Kiberd, Professor atUniversity College Dublin. In his workThe Irish Writer and the Worldhe unmasks the

mechanisms which create fetishes, images for national identities, and which result in peoples

like the Irish or the Jewish being defined, derided and decided by others.Professor Kiberd considers that the Stage Irishman was a caricature invented in England, based

on ignorance and fear of the Other. The English have always looked at their Celtic other in

order to see themselves, and in spite of the feeling of superiority that this comparison alwaysinvolved, it also involved a continuous implicit dialogue, some sort of relationship or spiritual

bond. The need to imitate the Other was felt on both sides, and most of the greatest Irish writers

displayed a masterful use of the English language and a subtle understanding of cultures and

people. Oscar Wilde is probably the best example here, as we are going to see in the next unit,demonstrating how easily Englishness could be performed, and that it too, could become a

stereotype. In fact, according to postcolonialist theorists, the colonized are interested in

observing the habits and behaviour of the colonizers and in subverting the order by imitating the

masters. The intention of subversion or challenge of the oppressive power is always present incolonized countries, and Ireland is no exception. As Declan Kiberd says:

Such a view of the Other was a neurosis, for the neurotic is one who behaves as if the identity of

his antagonist is all that determines his own (just as male hysterics act as if their masculinity is inall things the reverse of that which is called feminine). Many narrow-gauge Irish nationalists


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bought into this reactive thinking, patenting an Ireland that was less a truly liberated zone than a

sort of not-England, in which every virtue of the colonising country had its equal but opposite

Irish counterpart. In that depressing context of endless oppositionism between both parties, theStage Irishman was of some limited value, offering a recognisable figure through which both

sides could at least begin to negotiate. Even though the figure had been created by a succession

of English playwrights, there was a very real sense in which Irish people chose to occupy theassigned role, if only to complicate and ultimately to challenge it.

2.5. The Literary Revival: Reconstructing IrishnessIreland was the first modern state in which the cultural revolution preceded the political one. If

the Free Irish State was set up in 1922, the Irish intellectuals and patriots started a campaign forre-asserting the national values and traditions in the last decade of the 19

thcentury. Douglas

Hydes speech The Necessity for De-Anglicising Irelandwas a sort of starting signal for a series

of actions that were intended as a cultural movement more effective than the political fight for

Home Rule.William Butler Yeats was among the first to realize the importance of reappraising the Irish

legends and folklore, and initiating a cultural movement that would replace the political fight for

Home Rule and land reform. He published a collection ofFairy and Folk Tales of the IrishPeasantry (1888), which together with Douglas Hydes collectionBeside the Fire (1890) became

the first authentic collections of folklore in Irish. The National Literary Society founded by Yeats

in Dublin and The Gaelic League continued to militate for the national spirit and the spread of

the Irish culture abroad. At that moment of increasing industrialization worldwide, the Celts andother so-called primitive peoples were thought to possess an instinctive understanding and

knowledge, as suggested by Yeatss volume The Celtic Twilight(1983), and the book set a trend

of return to original and ancient truth that characterized the Revival.Among the most significant publications were Standish OGradysHistory of Ireland: Cuculain

and His Contemporaries (1880) and The Coming of Cuculain (1895), which celebrated the

heroic ancient Celtic king who became the dominant fictional figure of the Revival. Yeats

himself presented him in his Cuchulain cycle of plays and in poems, and Lady Gregory wrote anarrative with the figure of Cuhulain as a central character. The other celebrated figure of the

Celtic legends was a female character, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, who was often presented as a

symbol of Ireland itself.Other significant publications interested in cultivating the history and folklore or researching into

Irish language and literature followed: Standish OGradys Silva Gaelica (1892), a large

anthology of stories translated into impressive English prose; Hydes The Story of Early GaelicLiterature and Literary History of Ireland. The Irish Texts Society was founded in 1899 for the

publication of Gaelic texts and of an Irish-English Dictionary (1904).

The literary Revival attempted to present a unified Irish culture built around the figures of the

legendary past and the simplicity and nobility of the rural class, especially in the Western part ofIreland, still unspoiled by industrialization and political fights. This idealization of the Irish

peasant was also strongly criticized by some of Yeatss contemporaries, such as J. M. Synge,

whose play The Playboy of the Western Worldfocuses on the violence and harshness of the

poverty-stricken peasants of the Western counties. This unflattering representation was receivedas an insult by the nationalist audiences at the Abbey Theatre.

The Literary Revival comes to a close with Yeatss poemNineteenth Hundred and Nineteenth

(published in 1922) and Joyces Ulysses(1922). Joyce attacks many of the Revivals mainfigures for their exaggerated Celticism or for nationalism, intolerance and hatred. Against such


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limited attitudes he sets the broad humanity of Leopold Bloom, a Jew and a citizen of the

world, and Stephen Dedalus, the open-minded and rebellious artist in becoming.

The Revival contributed to creating an image of a pastoral, mythic, unspoiled Ireland thatfascinated even British audiences and readers and influenced subsequent writers in the twentieth

century. It reflected the renewed enthusiasm for Gaelic literature, language and culture. Its spirit

was continued even towards the end of the twentieth century by the Field Day theatricalcompany, founded in Derry by the playwright Brian Friel, and the associated literary movementwhich set out to redefine Irish cultural identity. This movement included famous writers such as

Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney and the film-maker David Hammond.

2.6. The Abbey TheatreProbably the most active and prestigious cultural institution growing out of the Literary Revival

was the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, set up initially as The Irish Literary Theatre in 1898 and then

becoming The Abbey in 1904. It concentrated around it all the great writers of the age following

the death of Parnell, the Irish hero who tried to save Ireland by his speeches in the BritishParliament. If previous Anglo-Irish playwrights such as George Farquhar, R. B. Sheridan and

Oscar Wilde had successfully written for London audiences, The Abbey was intended to found a

new Irish drama. The founder directors of the company were William Butler Yeats LadyGregory, later joined by J. M. Synge and Lennox Robinson, and they promoted Irish values and

new writers alongside classical drama productions.

Among the first performances was Yeatss play Countess Cathleen(May 1899), George Russels

Deirdre and Lady Gregorys pleasant comedies based on Irish folkways. Some Irish plays thatwere to become classical were first rejected by the theatre, like George Bernard ShawsJohn

Bulls Other Island(1905), while Sean OCaseys The Plough and the Stars (1926) andJuno

and the Paycockwere some of the most important premieres. The Abbey was at the heart of allthe main cultural controversies of the first part of the twentieth century.

The Abbey became the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world in 1924. In

the early 1950s the Abbey company moved to the nearby Queens Theatre after a fire had

destroyed its playhouse. A new Abbey Theatre, housing a smaller, experimental theatre, wascompleted in 1966 on the original site. While the Abbey today retains its traditional focus on

Irish plays, it also stages a wide range of classic and new works from around the world.

2.7. Summary:This unit made a survey of the significant moments in the development of an Irish

culture and literature at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century

literature. The unit first placed the Celtic element in a historic context and presentedthe identity difference it brought to public attention, including the stereotypal image of

the stage Irishman. Then the focus shifted to the Literary Revival, the cultural

movement intended to rebuild national identity after the destructive effects of the

nineteenth century history.

2.8. End of UNIT TEST1. What Celtic languages are known today?

2. How did Mathew Arnold define the Celtic Other?

3. What kind of image does the stereotype called the stage Irishman present?4. What is Professor Declan Kiberds position towards this stereotype?

5. How did the writers of the Literary Revival attempt to reconstruct the Irish

Identity?6. In what way is the Abbey Theatre and the plays it promotes different from other


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institutions of the kind?

UNIT THREE: WILLIAM BUTLER YEATSTHE FIRST NATIONAL POET3.1. Introduction

3.2. Competences

3.3. General Considerations

3.4. The Poems of the Historic Cycles3.5. The Irish Issue3.5.1. Example

3.6. The Meditative Poems

3.7. Summary3.8. End of Unit Test

UNIT THREE: WILLIAM BUTLER YEATSTHE FIRST NATIONAL POET

3.1. IntroductionIn this unit you are going to analyze some poems by the first great Irish poet,William Butler Yeats. Yeatss importance as a public figure, especially his activity as

a director of the Abbey Theatre, was presented in Unit Two. Now the emphasis will

be on his poetic work.3.2. CompetencesOn completion of UNIT THREE students will become familiar with some of Yeatss

major texts, dealing with Irish issues or with broader philosophical topics. They will

be able to discuss the major themes and devices of his poetic work and comparepoems and devices with the aim of refining their analytical skills.

Study time for UNIT THREE: 3 hours

3.3. General ConsiderationsAs a poet, Yeats is a late Romantic, being attracted to old legends and myths, to history and to

the nature of rural Ireland which inspired some of his meditations, to magic, spiritualism and

astrology. As he wrote poetry for nearly sixty years, there is a great variety of styles and ideas in

his work. There is the simplicity of local Irish legends and ballads, the complex symbolism ofpoems about Gaelic mythology, a more direct and bitter tone in poems concerned with public

contemporary events, or the deep meditative form of philosophical poems.

He was also busily engaged in writing articles and reviews of Irish literature, edited WilliamBlakes poems, helped the activity of the Gaelic League and published several collections of

Irish fairy tales and legends.

His volume of poetry published in 1893, The Celtic Twilight, gave its name to the kind ofromantic, misty, dreamy and melancholic poetry that was being produced at that time by several

imitators. It was the result of his research in the Irish folklore and his interest in Hiberno-Irish,

the language spoken by country people steeped in oral traditions. This Celtic stage in his poetic

career reached a climax in the volume The Wind Among the Reeds (1895), with symbolic andesoteric lyrics.

Yeats wrote many love poems dedicated to Maud Gonne, a nationalist and eccentric young

woman, to whom he proposed several times, but was constantly refused. After being actively

involved in the Literary Revival and the theatrical life of Dublin for several decades, he becamea senator of the Free Irish State in 1922 and participated to the educational reform of the country.

He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1923 and continued to write poetry. Among his

well-known volumes of poems mention can be made ofThe Wind Among the Reeds, In the SevenWoods, Michael Robartes and the Dancer, The Winding Stairs andOther Poems, New Poems.


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In 1928 he published a magnificent poem, The Tower, focused on legends surrounding Thoor

Ballylee, the problem of age and mortality, war and love. It was also the title of a whole volume

containing some of Yeatss greatest lyric poems, among which Sailing to Byzantium (in whichthe poet attempts to escape time by taking refuge in art),Meditations in Times of Civil War

(making a survey of the troubles of modern Ireland),Among School-Children ( a wonderful

meditation on the mutability of life),Leda and the Swan ( dealing with the major theme of thevolume, namely the brutality of history).Yeats was unanimously recognized as the leading literary figure in Ireland in his time, the

founder of modern Irish literature in English and one of the greatest modern poets in any

language.

3.4. The Poems of the Historic CyclesA place apart in his poetic work is taken by the poems related to the historic cycles.Leda and

the Swan describes the rape of Leda by Zeus who took the form of a swan, a rape which resulted

in the birth of Helen, the destruction of Troy and the disintegration of early Greek civilization:A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.According to the poets own statement, he wrote the poem as a meditation upon the static and

individualistic condition of mankind after the French Revolution, when nothing is possible but

some movement, or birth from above, preceded by some violent annunciation. Thus the union

of Leda and Zeus is seen as a significant one between the human and the divine , announcing anew civilization.

Two Songs From a Play is a poem focused on the end of the second Greek cycle and the

beginning of the Christian phase. Each of these stages begins and ends in violence, which isregarded by Yeats as the engine of history. The first stanza focuses on the myth of Dionysus,

born of a mortal, Persephone, and Zeus. He was torn to pieces by the titans, but Athene snatched

his heart from his body and brought it to Zeus, who swallowed it, killed the Titans, and begat

Dionysus again upon another mortal. The Muses sing of it as a play because they regarded theritual death and rebirth of the god as recurring, part of the cycles of history.

Yeats speaks of a second Troy as a return of the Golden Age, his romantic vision, sometimes

coupled with astrological perspectives, being very often concerned with the evolution anddestruction of human civilization. The poem ends with a typically romantic view of mutability

and transitoriness:

Everything that man esteemsEndures a moment or a day.

Loves pleasure drives his love away,

The painters brush consumes his dreams;

The heralds cry, the soldiers treadExhaust his glory and his might:

Whatever flames upon the night

Mans own resinuous heart has fed.

3.5. The Irish IssueThe poemNineteen Hundred and Nineteen belongs to the same volume The Tower, and was first

published under the title Thoughts upon the Present State of the World. It arose out of some

horror at Gort as the poet declared, during the period when the guerilla warfare waged by theIrish Republican Army was countered by the activities of the British forces. The lines are full of


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intensity and foreshadow the poetic responsibility taken half a century later by the other national

poet, Seamus Heaney:

Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmareRides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery

Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,

To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;The night can sweat with terror as beforeWe pieced our thoughts into philosophy,

And planned to bring the world under a rule,

Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.The present is seen not only as violent and unreasonable, but also as a mockery of the high ideals

that had been expressed only a few years before (Come let us mock at the wise), a time of the

blind and of angry cries.

Yeatss best-known poem that deals with the contemporary events in Ireland isEaster 1916. Thepoem was written one year after the uprising that was meant to overthrow British rule and gain

complete independence. On that Easter day, April 24, about 700 armed patriots (members of the

Irish volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army) occupied the important buildings in central Dublin.The revolt was repressed by the British troops after about four days and fifteen of the leaders

were sent to court martial and executed in public. They became national heroes and it is this

spirit of solidarity with them that the poem celebrates.

The poem is constructed in four stanzas of unequal length and with a clear structural pattern. Inthe first stanza the future heroes are presented as ordinary people that anyone could meet in the

dull streets of the capital and they were not given any particular attention. In the motley world

of Dublin everything seemed to be petrified in meaninglessness or useless mockery. It is the lasttwo lines of the stanza, which are emphasized by repetition in other two stanzas, that indicate the

difference these heroes gesture made:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.The idea of change is reinforced by repetition and determination with strong adverbs like

utterly. The result of that change is expressed by an oxymoron, a terrible beauty, and

remains therefore ambiguous until the end of the poem.The second stanza is the celebration of some of the revolts leaders who are sketched in a few

lines each. They were acquaintances of the poet, like Countess Constance Markievicz, an Irish

nationalist who joined the Citizen Army and who was sentenced to death but then the sentencewas commuted to life imprisonment. After 1918 she was the first woman to be elected to the

Westminster Parliament, but she refused the position and continued to oppose the Treaty and to

serve gaol sentences. Another patriot celebrated by Yeats is Patrick Pearse, a member of the Irish

Bar, an orator, who published poetry and prose in English and Irish. He was in charge of therevolts headquarters at the General Post Office in Dublin. Another poet and critic who died in

1916 was Thomas MacDonagh, a professor at University College, Dublin. The poet even

celebrates one of his rivals, Major John MacBride, who was a drunken, vainglorious lout and

who had married Maud Gonne. He is one of those who resigned their part in the casualcomedy of submission and acceptance of British rule and contributed to the change, the birth of

the terrible beauty.

The third stanza places the idea of change within a broader frame, moving from the social area tothe natural world, where besides movement, there seems to exist a permanent element, the


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stone, keeping a balance and a centre. The metaphor of the stone is resumed in the fourth

stanza but with a different meaning, and the whole stanza is dominated by question marks which

render the poets doubt in connection with the necessity of the sacrifice made by the heroes henames once again in celebration:

Example 3.5.1.

This is the fourth and final stanza of Yeatss poemEaster 1916:Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?That is Heavens part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her childWhen sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, no night but death;

Was it needless death after all?For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;

An what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?I write it out in verse

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connoly and pearseNow and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Interpret the fourth stanza of the poem answering the questions it contains andexplaining the metaphor of the last line, a terrible beauty is born.

3.6. The Meditative PoemsYeatss romantic dispositions include various meditations on history, art, religion, or the

evolution of the human society in its multiple aspects.Among School Children is one such poemwhich is based on a series of contradictions: youthold age, pastpresent, essence

appearance, realityrepresentation, philosophyordinary life, bodysoul, divineprofane,

religious loveerotic love. All these are brought to the poets mind by the simple situation of a

classroom where children learn basic things like reading, history and counting and where hecomes as a public man, that is as an inspector, a representative of the Government of the new

Irish Free State. The old man is stared upon by the children and he falls into a meditative mood

which evokes not only his personal past, but the whole spiritual evolution of mankind. The mostvivid image in his mind is that of the beautiful Maud Gonne, whom he imagines as a school

child. Her image is envisioned as a Ledaean beauty, painted by Italian Renaissance painters. The

poet even depicts himself as a young boy, so that his present old age contrasts with the betterdays of his youth. The glories of the past and the inevitable doom and decay of everything are


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also related to great ancient thinkers Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, the first one being evoked

for his theory of the shadows:

Plato thought nature but a spume that playsUpon a ghostly paradigm of things;

The end of the poem is a meditation on the distinction between appearance and essence, part and

whole, as embodying all the previous oppositions:O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?In his maturity work Yeats often expressed his worries about the irrational violence taking place

everywhere around. The rise of communism after the atrocities of the WW1, the violence at

home, the destruction of a whole set of values together with the loss of the old world, all this

inspired a series of poems which, in good romantic tradition, are meant to warn hiscontemporaries of the disastrous effects of such actions. Thus the poem The Second Coming

presents a view of the gyres, the representation of the historical cycles in the form of a whirling

spiral with repetitive aspects of growth followed by decay. It is a gloomy, pessimistic view ofhistorical change, in which one age is the reversal of the preceding one, and the Second Coming

undoes all that has been achieved in the centuries of Christian civilization:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

If Christs birth had been a revelation and salvation, this Second Coming is likely to bring in a

new era of irrational force suggested by the beast with the shape of a lion slouching out of the

desert with a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.The motif of the gyres as a representation of the motion of history appears in several poems,

including the one with this title, The Gyres, published in a later volume entitledNew Poems.

Interpret these first two stanzas of the poem focusing on the aspects the poet

chooses for exemplifying the movement of the gyres:

The GyresThe gyres! The gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth;

Things thought too long can be no longer thought,

For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,And ancient lineaments are blotted out.

Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;

Empedocles has thrown all things about;Hector is dead and there is a light in Troy;We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.

What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,

And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?

What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop,A greater, a more gracious time has gone;

For painted forms or boxes of make-up


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In ancient tombs I sighed, but not again;What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice,And all it knows is that one word Rejoice!

Meditations about artistic forms and styles are a constant preoccupation with Yeats. They areoften intertwined with reflections about the transitoriness of all natural forms as opposed to the

artifice of eternity embodied by artistic creations like the Byzantine mosaics or the objectsmade by Grecian goldsmiths, as suggested in the poem Sailing to Byzantium.When contemplating works of art, Yeats refers to general frames of mind that characterize

mankind, so that a specific object becomes symbolic of systems of value or historical moments

in the history of culture. This is also the case of the poem entitledLapis Lazuli, inspired by acarving in lapis that the poet received as a birthday present. The poem begins with reflections

about the mounting political conflicts of the 1930s in which Italy and Germany were involved,

and the poet mentions the Zeppelins that had raided London in the First World War.

Shakespeares tragic heroes and heroines (Hamlet, King Lear, Ophelia and Cordelia) arecontrasted with the contemporary world lacking their dignity, their broad vision and ecstasy at

the approach of death: They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;/Gaiety transfiguring all that

dread. This tragic play performed with joy indicates the power of transfiguration that true artinspires, a transcendence of the mere mortal condition. It is precisely this transfiguration that thepiece of carved lapis lazuli inspires. The representation of the three Chinamen climbing a steep

mountain makes the poet envisage not their effort or the tragic scene they stare, but the delight

they feel when reaching the top of the mountain and their glittering eyes when listening to themusic one of them, who is carrying a musical instrument, will likely play. Aesthetic pleasure

thus intermingles with a type of heroism that raises not only the one who performs artistic

activities but also those who contemplate them to a sublime state.

3.7. Summary:This unit presented some significant moments in the poetic creation of William Butler

Yeats, Irelands greatest poet of all times.

His extensive work is divided into three thematic categories for the sake ofclarification: the poems of the historical cycles, the Irish poems and the meditative

poems, but in fact his work is much more diverse. The brief analyses of the poems

chosen are accompanied by some examples that illustrate Yeatss style and thinking.

3.8. End of UNIT TEST1. Name some of Yeatss volumes of poetry and give examples of well-known

poems

2. Mention some general topics in his poetry.3. What are the themes of Two Songs From a Play?

4. What Irish issue is focused on inNineteen Hundred Nineteen andEaster 1916?

5. What historical moment is dealt with inEaster 1916?

6. What doubts and anxieties does the poet express in the last stanza ofEaster1916?

7. Analyze the motif of the gyres. In what poems is it used and what does it signify?

ASSIGNMENT 1. Summarize the major developments brought by the Literary Revival

and its representatives to the construction of the Irish cultural identity. Write about 400

words.

UNIT FOUR: OSCAR WILDE4.1. Introduction


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4.2. Competencies

4.3. General Considerations

4.4. The Importance of Being Earnest

4.5. The Mirror of Society

4.6. A Postcolonial Reading

4.6.1. Example4.7. Summary4.8. End of Unit Test

4.1. IntroductionThis unit makes a brief presentation of the dramatic work of Oscar Wilde, with afocus on his play The Importance of Being Earnest. After some general

considerations about his work and social image, the discussion of the play is divided

into two main areas: the interpretation of the social aspects and the more recent

postcolonial reading of some scenes and motifs.

4.2. CompetenciesAt the completion of Unit Four the students will be able to argue for Oscar Wildes

place in the canon of both English and Irish literature. They will be able to identifykey aspects of his drama, of his devices and style. They will provide reasons for a

postcolonial reading ofThe Importance of Being Earnest.

Study time for UNIT FOUR: 3 hours

4.3. General considerationsBy his full name Oscar Fingal OFlahertie Wills Wilde (1854 1900). He was a playwright,

poet and author of numerousshort storiesand one novel entitled The Picture of Dorian Gray. An

eccentric and complex personality, he was one of the celebrities of London of the late Victorianage, but as a result of a series of trials, Wilde he lost prestige and was imprisoned for two years

hard labour.

Oscar Wilde owes his personality and his home education to his mother, an Irish patriot. He then

continued his education at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Oxford, where he joined the Aestheticmovement (interested in making art of life). His social life was full of poise, associated with the

fashion of dandyism, which attracted him some criticism, but also respect in the literary and

aesthetic circles to which he belonged. He became famous for the paradoxes and witty sayingswhich were extensively quoted and he very much cultivated this image of witticism. Upon his

arrival in the USA for a lecture tour, Wilde reputedly told a customs officer that I have nothing

to declare except my genius.Oscar Wildes first published work wasPoems (1881), followed by the childrens stories The

Happy Prince (1888), and a collection of essays calledIntentions (1891). But his real literary

fame came from his drama, which became quickly a real success on the London stage: Lady

Windermeres Fan (1892),A Woman of No Importance (1893).An Ideal Husbandand TheImportance of Being Earnest (1895).

4.4. The Importance of Being EarnestThis is one of the most widely performed English comedies and a wonderful portrait of the

Victorian society, manners and values. It is set both in London and in the countryside during thelate Victorian era and is full of witty dialogue and satire against the Victorian shallowness and

hypocrisy.

The main characters are two pairs of young people, Jack Worthing and Gwendolen Fairfax, andAlgernon Moncrief and Cecily Cardew, all of them very mundane, superficial, libertine and
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irresponsible. The young men lead a double life, inventing masks for their social convenience.

Thus Jack becomes Earnest in London, and he invents a brother in London in order to escape his

countryside duties (where he has a ward, Cecily) whenever he pleases. Algernon (Algy) invents afriend Bunburry who is seriously ill and in constant need of his care in order to escape boring

social duties that his aristocratic position imposes, and this game is called bunburying.

Gwendolen is the daughter of Lady Bracknell, one of the most vivid characters in Wildes plays,and in spite of her mothers very strict attitude, she develops a relationship with Jack, whom shepretends to love for his name, namely Earnest. Much of the humour of the play derives from this

name, as both young men claim to be called Earnest, then when their real names are revealed,

they both plan to be re-baptized Earnest. Jack apparently discovers at the very end, when thesecret of his birth and parentage is revealed, that his true name was Earnest and that his social

position is worthy of Lady Bracknell and her daughter.

The two imaginary people created by Jack and Algernon might symbolize the empty promises or

deceit of the Victorian era. Not only is the character Ernest anything but earnest for the majorityof the play (the pun of the name becomes obvious), but he also doesnt even really exist. Both of

them allow Jack and Algernon to live a lie while appearing to observe the highest moral

standards. They can thus indulge in their libertine behaviour without suffering any consequences.The attitude they adopt betrays the Victorian societys lack of real values and admiration for

style, money and social rank.

A central motif and element of the plot, the handbag in which Jack was found as a baby at

Victoria Station by his benefactor, the late Mr. Cardew, becomes another subversive element thatWilde ingeniously uses to reveal the loss of real values in the Victorian age. Lady Bracknell even

takes it as a true representation of Jacks social status in the absence of his real parents. The

unexpected revelations made by Miss Prism, the governess, turn the bag into a tool of upwardsocial mobility, an object that confers Jack an identity at last. His identity had been in crisis all

along not only due to his Bunburying game or to his status as a foundling, but also due to the fact

that the other indication of his origins is the Brighton line of Victoria Station where he had been

found. It was situated at that time at the intersection of two different directions, the western oneleading to the wealthier parts of London, and the eastern one to the more impoverished areas.

The image of the dandy, both in this play and in Oscar Wildes own life, is representative for the

London society of the age. The posture ofconspicuous idleness, immorality, and effeminacythat some critics distinguish in it, allowed a distancing from the exaggerated materialism of the

middle class. As Rita Felski says,

Like woman and like the work of art, the dandy can be perceived in aestheticist doctrine asquite useless; exalting appearance over essence, decoration over function, he voices a protest

against prevailing bourgeois values that associate masculinity with rationality, industry, utility,

and thrift.

4.5. The Mirror of SocietySome critics have recognized the role Lady Bracknell plays at more than an individual level: she

can be considered to represent the larger societys work to fit individual subjects into socially

recognized categories. Not only does she educate her daughterwith utmost care, but she has a

constant tendency of referring all attitudes or actions to the social rules of the upper classes.When Algernon claims he does not care about social duties, Lady Bracknell acts on behalf of

Society: Society never speaks disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. She therefore assumes a

role larger than her own position, she feels she represents her whole social class. It is in thisposition that she approves or disapproves of the two marriages in the play, in fact her attitude


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changes from one extreme to the other depending on the wealth and name of the eligible

protagonists (Cecily and Jack, the two outsiders of her family until the end of the play). From

most of Lady Bracknells utterances, we can realize how the subject is socially constituted, notonly through titles and fortune, but also by the supportive discourse of those empowered to make

the rules. For her Algernon, who has no means of his own and has to marry into money, he has

nothing but his debts to rely on, or, Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say anostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can onedesire?

It is the looks of the man that are marketable here, and this represents one of the famous

inversions of positions and roles that the play performs: in the traditional patriarchal societies itis the womans beauty which becomes marketable in marriage. But Oscar Wilde chooses to

subvert the common view of the Victorian order and presents womanly men and manly women

whose role is not only to create a comical effect, but also to destabilize a rigid social order. The

Importance of Being Earnestcan thus be read from a postcolonial perspective as a critique of theEnglish society made by an Irish writer who became very familiar with the subtleties of the

language and of the culture it represents. I am Irish by race, Oscar Wilde once said, but the

English have condemned me to speak the language of Shakespeare. To his San Franciscoaudiences he was even more direct in this attitude: The Saxon took our lands from us and made

them destitute but we took their language and added new beauties to it. Such statements, as

well as some of the episodes in his life, reveal the fact that Wilde had always felt as an outsider

in England, an Irishman.The inversion of gender identity is manifest in many scenes and utterances in the play: the

women read German philosophy or discuss the physical appeal of men, while the men lounge

elegantly on sofas and eat muffins or cucumber sandwiches. It is women who propose marriage,while men are expected not to be public figures, but to perform household duties, according to

Gwendolens description of her father:

Outside the family circle, papa, I am glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it

should be. The home seems to me the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a manbegins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I dont

like that. It makes men so very attractive.

Wildes inversion of gender roles could be interpreted in several ways, and one of them isconnected to his contempt of Victorian norms and of the extreme Victorian division between

male and female, seen as two separate spheres.

Inversion functions at various levels in the play, from characters to language games, especiallyparadoxes. At the level of characters, another notable inversion is that exemplified by the role of

servants. In the play, it is servants who set the agenda for their masters, as for instance Miss

Prism negligence that leads to the loss of Jack as a baby. The language games are constantly used

to subvert meaning and the Victorian pretenses of morality and respectability. If effeminacymakes men attractive, hypocrisy is also defined rather paradoxically. When meeting Algernon in

the second act, Cecily expresses her supposed anxiety towards him for being a really wicked

person, but when he denies it, she turns the claim back on him: If you are not, then you have

certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading adouble life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be

hypocrisy.

Study the inversion of gender roles in the following fragment in which Gwendolen

meets Jack and, with Algernons help, they manage to have a few moments on their


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own before the appearance of Lady Bracknell.Also pay attention to the role of language and of names.

JACK: But you dont really mean to say that you couldnt love me if my name wasnt Ernest?

GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldnt

love me then? GWENDOLEN [Glibly.] Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and likemost metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as weknow them.

JACK Personally, darling, to speak quite candidly, I dont much care about the name of Ernest

I dont think the name suits me at all.GWENDOLEN It suits you perfectly. It is a divine name. It has a music of its own. It produces

vibrations.

JACK Well, really, Gwendolen I must say that I think there are lots of other much nicer names. I

think Jack, for instance, a charming name.GWENDOLEN Jack? No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It

does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations. I have known several Jacks, and they all,

without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity forJohn! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never beallowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moments solitude. The only really safe

name is Ernest.

JACK Gwendolen, I must get christened at once- I mean we must get married at once. There isno time to be lost.

GWENDOLEN Married, Mr. Worthing?

JACK [Astounded.] Well surely. You know that I love you, and you led me to believe, MissFairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me.

GWENDOLEN I adore you. But you havent proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all

about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.

JACK Well may I propose to you now?GWENDOLEN I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible

disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly beforehand that I am

fully determined to accept you.JACK Gwendolen!

GWENDOLEN Yes, Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me?

JACK You know what I have got to say to you.

GWENDOLEN Yes, but you dont say it.JACK Gwendolen, will you marry me?

[Goes on his knees.]

GWENDOLEN Of course I will, darling. How long you have been about it! I am afraid you have

had very little experience in how to propose.JACK My own one, I have never loved anyone in the world but you.

GWENDOLEN Yes, but men often propose for practice. I know my brother Gerald does. All my

girl-friends tell me so. What wonderfully blue eyes you have, Ernest! They are quite, quite blue.I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present.

(ACT ONE)

4.6. A Postcolonial Reading


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In his book entitled Inventing Ireland, Professor Declan Kiberd interprets the play as a parable

of Anglo-Irish relations and a pointer to their resolution. He builds his postcolonial

interpretation on Wildes art of inversion and the device of the Double. If in psychology andpsychoanalysis the Double may represent a way of getting rid of frustrations and

embarrassments, in the special situation of the Irish context, it may be taken as the Englishmans

relation to the Celtic Other. Literary characters that created a double for themselves are involvedin crimes or have feelings of guilt, as is the case of Dr. Jekyll, or Dorian Gray in Oscar Wildesown novel. Similarly, England had tried to annihilate Irish culture, which had always been a sort

of mirror that reflected mostly unpleasant aspects.

Bunbury is Algys double, embodying in a single fiction all that is most creative and mostcorrupt in his creator. Bunbury is the shadow which symbolizes Algys need for immortality, for

an influential soul that survives death; and at the same time Bunbury is that ignoble being to

whom the irresponsible Algy transfers all responsibility for his more questionable deeds. The

service which the Irish performed for the English, Bunbury discharges for his creator: heepitomizes his masters need for a human likeness on the planet and, simultaneously his desire to

retain his own difference. Hence the play is one long debate about whether or not to do away

with Bunbury. Lady Bracknells complaints sound suspiciously like English claims that the Irishkept on changing their question (Kiberd 1995:42).

The solution of getting rid of Bunbury is not a final one, for the creator and his creation are

closely linked, and once the double is denied, it becomes a sort of fate that haunts the creator; so

Bunbury comes to set the agenda for Algernon, or Jacks brother sets the agenda for him. In thecase of Jack, when he decides to kill his brother and tells Cecily and the others about his death,

ironically his brother Algernon ( revealed to be a brother only at the end of the play) appears in

flesh and blood and ruins his plans. Similarly, the Irish had recently demonstrated the power of aweak nation over the imperial power through Parnells speeches in the Westminster Parliament

and the actions of the Irish nationalists which destabilized and sometimes paralyzed politics in

London. Moreover, the motif of the double also accounts for the duplicitous position of England

with respect to the Irish issue, the continuous alternation of use of force and conciliation. Afterperiods of strong coercion, it was convenient for the English Victorians to alleviate their feelings

of guilt by offers of reconciliation. As a true Irish, Wilde therefore made a witty and deep

critique of imperial culture, being one of the first great writers engaged in such a gesture, be it inthe disguised form of a comedy of manners. His personal life was also a demonstration of how

identity can be duplicated: he became more English than the English, mastering their language

better and displaying an eccentricity that could be taken for a fashion, but was in fact subversiveand critical of the establishment. In fact Oscar Wilde had discovered what James Joyce was to

express two decades later, namely that an Irishman only became fully aware of his identity when

he left his country. As Declan Kiberd and other postcolonial critics remark, identity is dialogic,

the Other is not only an enemy but also the truest friend, as it is from the Other that a sense of theself is derived. That is why Wilde loved England as Goethe loved the French. And he could

better express his Irish side by adopting the cultural forms and expressions of the stronger

culture.

The Importance of Being Earnestdemonstrates, through its reversals of situation, changes ofattitude and unexpected turns, that all power is unstable and it ultimately depends on the

powerless. It promotes the revolutionary ideal of the self-created man or woman, a model that

Lady Bracknell herself, the epitome of Victorianism, supports when advising Jack tomanufacture his identity by acquiring some relations as soon as possible. Beyond its comic


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effect, the remark reveals the belief in a construction of identity that defeats real circumstances

or determination.

The famous scene of Jacks interview by Lady Bracknell in order to determine his eligibility as asuitor for Gwendolen is a subtle demonstration of how the powerful attempt to impress by their

power, but at the same time of their weaknesses.

Example 4.6.1.Act One.

LADY BRACKNELL: How old are you?

JACK Twenty-nine.

LADY BRACKNELL: A very good age to be married at. I have always been of opinion that aman who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?

JACK [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.

LADY BRACKNELL: I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with

natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. Thewhole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate,

education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper

classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. What is your income?JACK: Between seven and eight thousand a year.LADY BRACKNELL[Makes a note in her book.] In land, or in investments?

JACK: In investments, chiefly.

LADY BRACKNELL: That is satisfactory. What between the duties expected of one duringones lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after ones death, land has ceased to be either a

profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. Thats all that can

be said about land.JACK: I have a country house with some land, of course, attached to it, about fifteen hundred

acres, I believe; but I dont depend on that for my real income. In fact, as far as I can make out,

the poachers are the only people who make anything out of it.

LADY BRACKNELL: A country house! How many bedrooms? Well, that point can be clearedup afterwards. You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like

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