W.B Yeats Essay
Module b: at the core of any poem is a desire to order and make sense of the world and our place in it. (do all three poems)
Reason for being rejected, lack of understanding- readings Maude Gonne
Airman- life is fleeting- trying to reason- soliloquy- irrationality
Swans- transient nature of life, its purpose, the use of question
W.B Yeats has explicitly referred to his works of poetry as a process whereby he expresses his own search for identification, a way of externalising what is an inner struggle; “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” Throughout his life and work, Yeats engaged in a “quarrel” with himself that has emerged as a distinctive quality in all of his poetry, notably “When You Are Old”, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” and “The Wild Swans At Coole.” The breadth and scope of his work and thematic concerns transcends definitive criticism, yet through engaging with his work from a structural, symbolic, post-colonial, feminist, cultural and subjective perspective, a holistic interpretation of his life and purpose will arise. Each work represents a tension between two forces, often internal and external, and places Yeats as the ambiguous presence who mediates between the two, in his writing he searches for passion as opposed to truth, in the hope that this passion will clarify his stance in the tumultuous world he inhabited.
“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, seeks to, through the balanced structure of the iambic tetrameter, document a process of internalization whereby the speaker tries to reason with the irrationality of war. As a dedication to Major Gregory, the son of Yeat’s dear friend Lady Gregory, the poem takes on personal meaning, yet is attributed universal resonance through the use of the indefinite article “an”, which implies the situation experienced by Gregory was not exclusive to his circumstance and could apply to any member of the armed forces exposed to the
Reason for being rejected, lack of understanding- readings Maude Gonne
Airman- life is fleeting- trying to reason- soliloquy- irrationality
Swans- transient nature of life, its purpose, the use of question
W.B Yeats has explicitly referred to his works of poetry as a process whereby he expresses his own search for identification, a way of externalising what is an inner struggle; “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” Throughout his life and work, Yeats engaged in a “quarrel” with himself that has emerged as a distinctive quality in all of his poetry, notably “When You Are Old”, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” and “The Wild Swans At Coole.” The breadth and scope of his work and thematic concerns transcends definitive criticism, yet through engaging with his work from a structural, symbolic, post-colonial, feminist, cultural and subjective perspective, a holistic interpretation of his life and purpose will arise. Each work represents a tension between two forces, often internal and external, and places Yeats as the ambiguous presence who mediates between the two, in his writing he searches for passion as opposed to truth, in the hope that this passion will clarify his stance in the tumultuous world he inhabited.
“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, seeks to, through the balanced structure of the iambic tetrameter, document a process of internalization whereby the speaker tries to reason with the irrationality of war. As a dedication to Major Gregory, the son of Yeat’s dear friend Lady Gregory, the poem takes on personal meaning, yet is attributed universal resonance through the use of the indefinite article “an”, which implies the situation experienced by Gregory was not exclusive to his circumstance and could apply to any member of the armed forces exposed to the