Yeats Biography Flashcards
1
Q
when was Yeats born?
A
1865 - 1939
2
Q
In what ways is Yeats an Irish Nationalist?
A
- He belonged to the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority that had controlled the economic, political, social, and cultural life of Ireland since at least the end of the seventeenth century.
- Yeats maintained his cultural roots, featuring Irish legends and heroes in many of his poems and plays.
3
Q
What was significant about 1885 for Yeats? [3]
A
- first poem
- developed his interest in the Occult (mystical, supernatural powers)
- he met John O’Leary, a famous patriot who had returned to Ireland after totaling twenty years of imprisonment and exile for revolutionary nationalistic activities.
4
Q
Who was John O’Leary? [3]
A
- friend of Yeats, Irish Nationalist who was imprisoned for revolutionary nationalistic activities
- he had a keen enthusiasm for Irish books, music, and ballads, and he encouraged young writers to adopt Irish subjects
- Inspired Yeats to write about Irish legends, Irish folklore, and Irish ballads and song
5
Q
What was significant about 1886 for Yeats? [3]
A
- moved to London with his family
- continued writing poems, plays and novels on Irish subjects - all with irish characters and scenes
- during these years he also met Maud Gonne who devoted herself to Irish Nationalism. Yeats loved her for over 3 decades and enhanced Yeats’ own dedication to Irish Nationalism
6
Q
Who was Maud Gonne?
A
- she was really fit
- she devoted herself to Irish Nationalism.
- Yeats loved her for over 3 decades and enhanced Yeats’ own dedication to Irish Nationalism
- Gonne also shared Yeats’s interest in occultism and spiritualism
7
Q
What was significant about 1890 for Yeats?
A
- he joined the Golden Dawn, a secret society that practiced ritual magic
- he was fascinated by the possibility of becoming a magus, and he became convinced that the mind was capable of perceiving past the limits of materialistic rationalism
- remained an active member for over 30 years
- but much of his poetry in the 1890s continued to reflect his interest in Irish subjects and also became increasingly interested in poetic techniques.
8
Q
What was significant about 1897 for Yeats?
A
- Yeats enjoyed his first stay at Coole Park, the County Galway estate of Lady Augusta Gregory. There he devised, with Lady Gregory and her neighbor Edward Martyn, plans for promoting an innovative, native Irish drama.
- The success of these productions led to the founding of the Irish National Theatre Society with Yeats as president.
9
Q
What was significant about 1904 for Yeats?
A
- the theatre opened and included plays by the company’s three directors: Lady Gregory, John M. Synge (whose 1907 production “The Playboy of the Western World” would spark controversy with its savage comic depiction of Irish rural life).
- At this time he also wrote ten plays, and the simple, direct style of dialogue required for the stage became an important consideration in his poems as well.
- His style changed from romantic to a more simple dialect and controversial rhythms
10
Q
What was significant about 1916? [3]
A
- he once again became a committed exponent of the nationalist cause, inspired by the Easter Rising, an unsuccessful, six-day armed rebellion of Irish republicans against the British in Dublin.
- MacBride, who was now separated from Gonne, participated in the rebellion and was executed afterward.
- Yeats reacted by writing “Easter, 1916,” an eloquent expression of his complex feelings of shock, romantic admiration, and a more realistic appraisal.
11
Q
What was significant about 1917?
A
- married Georgie Hyde-Lees and decided to stay in Ireland
- He had long been fascinated by the contrast between a person’s internal and external selves - between the true person and those aspects that the person chooses to present as a representation of the self.
12
Q
What was significant about his life with Georgie Hyde-Lees? How did his ideas develop?
A
- Yeats formulated theories about life and history. He believed that certain patterns existed, the most important being what he called gyres, interpenetrating cones representing mixtures of opposites of both a personal and historical nature
- gyres were initiated by the divine impregnation of a mortal woman—first, the rape of Leda by Zeus; later, the immaculate conception of Mary. Yeats found that within each two-thousand-year era, emblematic moments occurred at the midpoints of the thousand-year halves. At these moments of balance, he believed, a civilization could achieve special excellence, and Yeats cited as examples the splendor of Athens at 500 B.C., Byzantium at A.D. 500, and the Italian Renaissance at A.D. 1500.
13
Q
what was significant about 1921?
A
- bitter controversies erupted within the new Irish Free State over the partition of Northern Ireland and over the wording of a formal oath of allegiance to the British Crown.
- These issues led to an Irish civil war, which lasted from June, 1922, to May, 1923. In this conflict Yeats emphatically sided with the new Irish government.
- rebels were kidnapping government figures and burning their homes.
- As senator, Yeats considered himself a representative of order amid the chaotic new nation’s slow progress toward stability.
- The energy of the poems written in response to these disturbing times gave astonishing power to his collection. One poem including ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’
14
Q
What happened as Yeats aged?
A
- he saw Ireland change in ways that angered him. The Anglo-Irish Protestant minority no longer controlled Irish society and culture, and with Lady Gregory’s death in 1932 and the consequent abandonment of the Coole Park estate, Yeats felt detached from the brilliant achievements of the eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish tradition.
- throughout his last years, Yeats’s creative imagination remained very much his own, isolated to a remarkable degree from the successive fashions of modern poetry
- Yeats wanted all art to be full of energy
