W. B.

YEATS
(18651939)
Middle period (1900-1916)

04 / 11 / 2016

Middle Yeats
The minor poet may spend a lifetime writing
similar poems, but the major poet continues
to mature until he dies so that, if confronted by
two poems of equal merit but written at
different times, the reader can immediately say
which was written first.
(W. H. Auden)

Middle Yeats
Responsibilities (1914)
Responsibilities and Other Poems (1916)
accepting new challenges
seeking the perfection of the work
constantly rewriting and revising poems

Middle Yeats
a turning point at the end of the 1890s
setting himself the fresh task of founding an
Irish national theatre
the Abbey Theatre, 1904
early plays: The Countess Cathleen, Cathleen
Ni Houlihan, On Bailes Strand, The Kings
Threshold

Middle Yeats
the turn-of-the-century period - mainly a
period of theatre business, management of
men, of finances, box-office takings and
training actors
riotous demonstrations at the performance of
J. M. Synges drama The Playboy of the
Western World, 1907

Middle Yeats
Josephine Miles, Eras and Modes in English
Poetry:
- adjectival style (early Yeats) - static poetry;
adjectives slow down the rhythm
- Yeatss early poetry bares traces of 19th
century poetry

Middle Yeats
his first development at the turn of the
century:
a development of predication
(of restlessness, salt, hate, masculinity )
I was never so full of new thoughts for verse,
though all thoughts quite unlike the old ones.
My work has got far more masculine. It has
more salt in it.

Middle Yeats
a general tendency towards fewer and fewer

adjectives; towards more action and clarity as he

grew older
adjectival style replaced by clausal structure
moving to verbal poetry a characteristic of his
middle and late poetry
a sense of activism in Yeatss syntax and
vocabulary
reliance on everyday idiom

Middle Yeats
summarizing his work from 1903 to 1913:
I have tried to make my work convincing
with a speech so natural and dramatic that the
hearer would feel the presence of a man
thinking and feeling.
E. Pound encouraged Yeats to modernise his
poetry (Dont use superfluous words!)
abandoning decorative poetics

Middle Yeats
Responsibilities (1914) one of his most
important collections
taking responsibility for human life
no longer evading themes from the social
ground of everyday
breaking the belief in poetic decorum
(deliberately archaic, artificial use of
language)

Middle Yeats
trying to recreate everyday speech
willing to confront modern existence
becoming a full flesh modern poet
fed up with earlier poetics
incorporating real events into his poetry
(e.g. the Easter Uprising, 1916)

Middle Yeats
although a Protestant, Yeats supported Irish nationalists
The 1916 Easter Rising (between 24 and 29 April) - an
attempt by Irish republicans to win independence from
Britain- the Irish Republic proclaimed
Easter 1916 written in the months following the
executions of the leaders
All changed, changed utterly
a terrible beauty is born.

Middle Yeats
the Easter Rising followed by:
the Anglo-Irish War / The War of
Independence (1919-1921)
- the country formally partitioned
- the Irish Free State established, 1922
- the Civil War (1922- 1923)

Middle Yeats
Edward Said:
... his anger at the schemes of partition the
celebration and commemoration of violence in
bringing about a new order, and the sinuous
interweaving of loyalty and betrayal in the nationalist
setting Like all the poets of decolonization Yeats
struggled to announce the contours of an imagined
or ideal community.

Middle Yeats
1917 marriage to Georgie Hyde Lees
automatic writing
(the texts compiled in a book titled A Vision)