In the period of nationalism, W. B. Yeats's works address the loss of nation and resolute fights for independence and remembrance of the fighters killed in the struggles. Freudian ideas of mourning and melancholy and moral masochism and Jacques Rancière's ideas of colonial 'policy' or 'police order' and postcolonial 'politics' can provide effective tools to understand characteristics of the post-colonial works by Yeats. By putting side by side Freud and Rancière, we can produce a combination of mourning-colonial police-order vs. melancholy-post-colonial politics. The colonial police-order induces the colonized Ego to forget the loss of nation and move on to other objects, for example, money, through mourning. Melancholic post-colonial fighters derail the workings of mourning espoused by the colonial policy or police order. Melancholy and moral masochism of the colonized Ego are the driving forces of post-colonial struggles. Melancholy of the colonized Ego and sadism of the Super-Egoic demand of independence and moral masochism of the colonized Ego can explicate the bloody and 'erotic' relationships between the colonized Ego and the womanized ideal of nation, which have been interpreted as 'fatal mistress,' 'eroticized politics' and 'vampirism' by many Yeats critics. But melancholy and moral masochism drove the colonized Ego to fall into a fatal love relation with the female symbol of nation demanding unconditional sacrifice of the colonized Ego, which renders 'eroticized politics' and 'vampirism' noticeable.
Brian Friel, who was born and raised in Northern Ireland, is called the best living Irish dramatist dealing with subjects focused on Ireland and its people in his plays.
In Faith Healer(1979), one of his best plays, Friel dramatizes a faith healer's experiences. The three characters, Frank(faith healer), Grace(Frank's wife), Teddy(Frank's manager) recollect the experiences they shared while travelling to cure the sick in Scotland and Wales. Their monologues detail the same experiences but are very different, according to Friel, because each recalls their memories according to their own desires and needs. Memory is not always accurate and can be a fiction.
Frank has the compulsion to transform all things around him into fiction. This ability is analogous to a writer's creative writing ability. Therefore, Frank is, in a sense, an artist.
Frank performs his faith healing shows in front of the sick with anxiety as he is not sure whether a miracle will occur or not. Like a faith healer, a dramatist as an artist writes dramas with anxiety because he is not sure that he will be able to move his audience with a successful performance. Frank is not sure that he will be able to move his audience. Frank is not sure if he has an ability to cure with miracles or if he is a con man. Like a faith healer, an artist has the sense of being a con man because he is indebted from his predecessors' works. Only through his death can Frank stop the maddening questions such as "Am I a con man? or am I endowed with a unique gift?" Frank is like a metaphor for an artist.
Friel, a dramatist, also has suffered from the agony of an artist and has been troubled by the scarcity of his creative works. Therefore Frank is a foil to Friel's autobiographical image.
It cannot be too much emphasized that in reading and appreciating poems, a correct understanding and interpretation of them is necessary; in criticizing and teaching them, a correct understanding based on the correct interpretation is a must. In the course of translating "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931" into Korean, it was found that both American and Korean scholars have made some errors in interpreting the poem. Two American scholars, Thomas R. Whitaker and Daniel A. Harris, made the same misinterpretation of the 4th line in the second stanza of the poem. They saw “all the rant” as made by the poetic speaker. Cross-checking the sentence structure and contextual meaning of the part makes it reasonable to say that the rant was a line uttered by Nature, the tragic hero of the tragedy which is the winter season. In the same way two Korean scholars made the same mistranslation of the word “hole” in the first stanza. They translated the word as an empty space within the bottom of the bed of Lake Coole. When one applies the sense to the line where the word belongs, the meaning of the part does not fit in well with the meaning of the whole poem. After all, it is also reasonable to say that the word “hole” means “a deep place in a body of water” in that the meaning harmonizes well with that of the whole stanza. In view of the errors committed in common by both Anglo-American and Korean scholars, no one can be expected to be perfect in interpreting literary works. Perfect interpretation is an ideal which every literary critic aims at but does not attain. This ideal can never be realized by a single person; but by the collaborative work of many researchers engaged in elucidation of the same literary work in their own way. This is, specifically, true of the Korean scholars who usually rely upon what their Anglo-American counterparts say about the literary works of the Anglo-American writers and poets. When this kind of collaborative work has been accumulated, and is easily accessible to our junior scholars, they will benefit greatly by avoiding the confusion suffered often by their senior scholars.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the theme of The Only Jealousy of Emer, one of W. B. Yeats's 'Cuchulain plays'. The central action of the play is the struggle of three women—Emeer, Eithne Inguba and Fand—for possession of Cuchulain. Unlike Eithne Inguba's confused, cowardly action, Emer's behavior is brave as well as insightful. And as the chorus suggests, Fand's allurements are transitory. Fand's metallic allurement contrasts with Emer's passionate suffering.
Fand wants to catch him to fulfill herself, not to aid in his salvation. Emer is more courageous than Eithne Inguba, more self-sacrificing than Fand, and more forgiving than Aoife. Emer's love for her husband transfigures her, whereas Aoife's vindictive hatred for Cuchulain costs them their only child. Emer is certainly a Yeatsian heroine who performs as nobly as Deirdre or Cuchulain.
Yeats's most immediate source for his Cuchulain plays was Lady Gregory's Cuchulain of Muirthemne, but he significantly altered the source to serve his purposes. Emer's thwarted desire to attack Fand with her knife is one of the few links between Yeats's source and his much changed finished work of art. From this primitive tale of vengeance and jealousy, Yeats created a sophisticated drama of mental suffering and self-sacrifice. A second major change in the source involves Cuchulain's recollection of Fand's attempt to ensnare his soul. Both his fear upon
awakening and his later praise of Emer for saving him suggest that he is glad of his deliverance, not despondent over the loss of Fand. Yeats's greatest modification came in his treatment of Emer's temperament. Instead of the jealous wife of seeking vengeance for herself, she is jealous only for her husband's well-being. By renouncing the love of the man she needs to end her loneliness, Emer proves herself superior to the source heroine.
In the final version, Yeats dramatized, through Emer's hope for the return of Cuchulain's love for her, through her initial inability to give up her hope of winning back his love, and through her final renunciation of his love, the depth of her love and the extent of her sacrifice.
This paper is an attempt to read Yeats's poetry in terms of postcolonialism. Drawing on the recent studies of Yeats and Irish literature, performed by such critics and scholars as Edward Said, David Lloyd, Declan Kiberd, and Jahan Ramazani, the paper examines the various aspects of Yeats as a postcolonial poet.
The fist part of the paper deals with the problems that we might encounter when we try to define the postcoloniality of Ireland, which is, in Luke Gibbons's words, "a First World country, but with a Third World memory." There also might be some difficulty in deciding when the postcolonial literature in English began in Ireland. Considering these problems and difficulties, the present writer understands the term "postcolonial" as "anticolonial" rather than "postindependence" or "since colonization," and discusses Yeats's poems which reveal the poet's anticolonial
attitude toward England.
The next main part of the paper begins by proposing "hybridity" as a feature of postcolonial literature in general. It is assumed that the concept of hybridity can provide the most appropriate and efficient way of understanding the true nature of Yeats's postcoloniality. In this respect, the poet's familial background as an Anglo-Irish Protestant, his complex relationships with the English poets, especially Spenser and Shakespeare, and his use of the English language are discussed.
Lastly, in order to see postcolonial hybridity in the specific poetic forms of Yeats's poetry, this paper discusses the use of place names and mythologies, both Irish and non-Irish, in his poems, as an anticolonial and hybridizing gesture. The paper also discusses some aspects of Yeats's poetic style, such as the lyrical form, poetic diction, and images and symbols, and shows how he hybridizes the poetic style which he inherited from the English poetic tradition.
The first significant modern theatre movement in Korea arose in the early 1920s. Modern Irish drama and its theatre movement has always been a major field of interest for the Korean intellectuals and dramatists who believed that it provided a model for the modern Korean theatre. The importation of Irish drama was systematically conducted by different groups from the Korean intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s, during which period many of them published articles concerning Irish drama and the Irish theatre movement.
A famous Korean writer Hyo-Seok Lee(1907-1942) published an article titled 'A Research about John Millington Synge's Drama' in 1930, a compressed version of his BA degree essay in Monthly Dae-joong-gong-ron(Public Opinion). However, despite of his fame and popularity as a writer and material for academic research, this article has been forgotten and has remained unknown. Majority of Korean scholars concentrate on Lee's novel and essays while comparatively neglecting Lee's interest towards Irish drama.
The main areas of discussions are the followings. First, socio-cultural significance of Irish impact on Korean theatre will be discussed. Second, in the context of Irish influence on Korean drama, the main feature of Lee's viewpoint towards Synge will be examined in comparison with other politically oriented Korean essays.
Eavan Boland finds her poetic identity in the significances of her birthplace of Ireland and her gender of an Irish woman. with this identity she shows a keen awareness of the fundamental sense of poetic ethics - to de-and re-construct the traditional literary frame imposed by male points of view, witnessing to the truths and facts of Irish women's experiences in the history of Ireland. In the broad sense of the Irish matter, Boland concerns with the artistic image and its relationship to the facts of women's lives in Ireland and she tries to find the poetic place of
women in pointing the loss of women in Irish history and literary tradition. In this aspect Boland tries to find the proper images to suggest the true identity of women just in history not outside of history. So her dependence on the power of language and on the objective attitudes to the common lives and trivial things of women's lives is the proof for her poetic ethics. Some poems of Boland's blast the muse who helps men to write women as a queen to Ireland as a mother to the children and husband. Instead she urges the muse to keep her place beside women poets in
creating the homely images. In creating the true images of women the common is present and she suggests the woman's potentiality as a subject and a viewer and as a mother and a poet. So Boland destabilizes the images of woman as a grand mythic queen and as an abstract composite of femininity. In this process Boland keeps her tone cold and cool even in showing her powerful views on the female identity. She achieves this attitude through 'looking' and 'watching.' She suggests to look into the mirror towards the general readers as well as poets herself even in her rage to the Irish literary tradition. So she keeps her own characteristic voices in finding and reintroducing the perspectives that run counter to the traditional Irish
male views on woman and history.
Throughout her plays, Christina Reid explores the lives of women in Belfast and successfully offers a bold interrogation of other facets of Belfast history from a Protestant women’s perspective. Reid’s examination of the politics, entrenched in the private and public lives of Northern Irish women, is the central focus of The Belle of the Belfast City. In the play, the current political unrest in Northern Ireland is set in relation to sexual and racial minorities, which in turn, are enforced by the misogyny embedded in sectarian violence and religious dogmatism. Far
from simplifying these questions, Reid takes extra care to show how the familial, social and political facets are all connected to the perpetuation of the prejudice surrounding idea of the Other and the nation. In addition to this, this play also combines the experience of exile in relationship to gender and sectarian violence through the stories of Belle, Dolly’s half-black granddaughter. As a narrator and inheritor of the matrilineal heritage, Belle by her existence raises questions about the national and racial categorizations of politics.
In this play, while male authority uses the female body to marginalize and exploit it, Reid successfully turns the victimized female body into a site of resistance and subversion of that authority. In addition to the family photographs, the songs and dances that are performed through the medium of the female body are unmistakably subversive. While the female voice and body within Jack’s idea of nation are objects of repression and silence, however, the women’s bodies and voices are freed and released in the ritual of female bonding that celebrates the subversive potential of the feminine body. With these theatrical devices, Reid carefully depicts and subverts the portraits of women whose roles and images have been imagined in the discourse of conflict-ridden Belfast.
Throughout Yeats's life, his occultism absorbed much of his time and energy. Yeats's occultism supported and enriched his poetry and plays, providing him with themes, the symbols, a philosophy that affirmed recurring self-renewal. Through the development of Yeats's occult thinking, from the Golden Dawn, through Per Amica Silentia Lunae, to A Vision, a continuous, coherent direction can be traced.
Books II and III of A Vision, deal with the nature of the human soul, its different principles, and its progression after death. In "The Completed Symbol," Yeats elaborates on the Four Principles of the soul ― the Husk, the Passionate Body, the Spirit, and the Celestial Body. The Principles find their Unity in the Celestial Body, man's archetype in Heaven.
In "The Soul in Judgement", examining the six after-death states, death, in general, is also presented as a transfer of consciousness from the physical plane to a higher one. During the first three states, or until Beatitude, the Spirit passes each time into a higher state of consciousness; after Beatitude, following the circular pattern of "The Great Wheel," the Spirit lapses slowly into relative unconsciousness.
These six states, like the twenty-eight phases, affect each other, and in each one the Spirit has to act under certain laws. The soul has to pass through all of these states in order to progress and to prepare for its reentry into the physical world.
This belief in the six after-death states stems from the occult sources mainly Theosophy which also teaches that the soul passes through six planes of consciousness after death -- the divine, the monadic, the spiritual, the intuitional, the mental, and the astral plane or plane of passions and emotions.
Yeats uses the lunar cycle to explain the soul's journey between lives. The concept of the Thirteenth Sphere is important because in the occult traditions, the number thirteen is also symbolic of unity and perfection. In A Vision the Thirteenth Sphere represents Unity since in it all antinomies are resolved.
Yeats's view of the soul is directly related to his belief in a universal duality ― the existence of opposite but equal forces that dominate a cycle alternately.
Yeats published a total of four books of In the Seven Woods over 19 year period starting from 1903 through 1922. A comparison of these four books demonstrates how constantly and diligently he repositioned the order of poems, not to mention correcting lines and changing the titles of some poems. It was 1908 when the order of poems was finally fixed. Yeats's habitual rearrangement of his poems suggests that the poet was still struggling to reshape his intention. The fixation of order of poems in the 1908 volume of In the Seven Woods then implies that Yeats finally found himself satisfied with the message he tried to orchestrate through the volume. If so, what is an organizational principle shaping the final version of In the Seven Woods? And what message is Yeats going to send through the book of poems? The purpose of this paper is to answer these to
questions. Here my argument is that what Yeats finally chose for the skeleton of the 1908 and 1922 volume was a meditative structure. That is, the final order of poems has been evolved over the years in such a way as to reflect a meditative structure. In other words, In the Seven Woods, as a meditative sequence, consists of three stages of a composition of place, analysis and colloquy, which resemble the process in a meditative poem. Hence, his poetic message for the volume is also concerned with the purpose of meditation--specifically the Yeatsian concept of
meditation--that is, transcending human limitations by dissolving antinomies. There are two axes in In the Seven Woods: one--vertical--axis is made by an individual poem; the other--horizontal--axis is built by an arrangement of poems which provides another poetic statement. Here we have an individual poem which, when viewed separately, mainly deals with his emotional turmoil and deep psychic unrest due to his troubled love experiences with Maud Gonne. Here we also have a whole group of poems which are carefully framed to elevate his personal bitterness and anxiety to the collective problems of human beings due to their inability to
deal with antinomian principles. Through In the Seven Woods, the main character, or Yeats, sets out a meditative journey, a progressive movement toward a state beyond time or an aconceptual state where the meditator finds an answer for his quest for oneness. In the end, however, Yeats shows his strong skepticism about the possibility of achieving oneness.
The paper analyzes three artists by looking into their art works; Kim Hongdo and Picasso and Yeats. Kim is the greatest painter Korea has ever seen in history, and Picasso is the greatest painter of the last century, whereas Yeats is the 20th century greatest poet. What they have in common is the literati painting in them.
The first two were painters, well versed in poetry. Kim did not create poems, but poems in pictorial images; the best paintings were created toward the end of his life, after a life-long effort to perfect his strokes in calligraphy. His three-pause execution of a stroke is the key to his perfection of his art. When it reaches the limit of perfection in art, its strokes resemble nothing in the world, an astounding feat in art. The effect the sum of strokes makes in a work of his is tantamount to the pure abstraction of soul in Yeats's supreme poetry, and to the pure abstraction,
or the pure form of Picasso's painting. It is quite natural that the pure abstraction in Picasso evokes the most beautiful sentiment toward the whole humanity. Picasso's secret to his great art must be his literati temperament in art.
Diasporic situation can happen under such circumstances as colonization, civil war, misrule, great natural disasters and globalization etc. According to Agnew, diasporic members frequently feel a sense of alienation in the host country. To resist assimilation into the host country, and to avoid social amnesia about their collective histories, diasporic people attempt to recreate their artistic, cultural, and political practices and productions.
In the sense above, Yeats and Heaney's poetry fall under diasporic literature. They describe some alienation, dispersion and the mental wound caused by the Great Famine as well as by inter-ethnic/religious conflicts as one result of colonization. The diasporic element of Yeats's poems is characterized by the extreme sense of alienation through his search for the faery land and the holy artistic city. Heaney also chose to be an inner émigré as a way of survival during Ulster Troubles.
Moreover, the two poets' works share diasporic characteristics, especially in the respect that they deal with the traces of the Great Famine leading to dispersion.
However, instead of assimilating into amnesia of the collective wound or into the host country, they both reveal their desire to cross over their local boundary, seemingly expanding into transnationalism.