In many of William Butler Yeats’s works, he creates a seemingly inescapable gyre or cycle that history and human lives follow. In The Second Coming, Yeats examines the cycle of history in which every two thousand years, a new messiah arrives. In...

Artists often use their work as an expression of their innermost thoughts and feelings. In his poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” W.B. Yeats describes a metaphorical journey to Byzantium, an ancient city filled with timeless art, that the poem’s...

William Butler Yeats, the esteemed twentieth-century poet, was in love with the Irish nationalist Maud Gonne; his poem “The Two Trees” was originally written for her. Gonne was very devoted to rather uncompromising ideologies, but in this poem...

In 1919, the year “The Second Coming” was written, World War I, one of the deadliest wars in history, had just ended and Ireland was in the throes of a war to fight British control. Tensions between Catholics and Protestants and those of different...

More so than any other Modernist writer, William Butler Yeats’ life and work reveal themselves to be intricately connected and draw on each other in multifarious ways. What makes Yeats’ poetry achieve so much power is the conscious employment of...

The idea that poetic forms are sensitive to and affected by the pressures of history is undisputed; yet whether a poet embraces this or challenges it varies. The adoption of a specific form inevitably implies historical concern. This is evident...

Literary composition was a fueling element in the Irish nationalist movement of the early twentieth century. William Butler Yeats undoubtedly placed himself as a leader in the Irish Literary Revival. While Yeats’s nationalism was not as drastic as...

“I am writing a woman out of legend. I am thinking how new it is – this story. How hard it will be to tell” (Eavan Boland). Much of twentieth-century Irish literature engages in issues relating to gender. Although stereotypical representations of...

The Irish Literary Revival has been about promoting a National consciousness, leaving the recurring English stereotypes of Ireland behind, and striving for new beginnings with a free Irish State. Ireland had oftentimes been subjected to two...

Ireland has, through the arts and its cultural heritage, often been perceived as a fantasy country; fantasy in the sense that it is often depicted in a simplified, romanticized fashion. This can be seen in William Butler Yeats’s and Lady Gregory’s...

Western literature has long been dominated by an imposing patriarchal vision, privileging the voices of men in creating written records of their experiences, commonly centered around conventional heterosexual desire and affluent “artist”...

Whilst this is a credible assessment of Yeats’s later works and can be supported through analysis of the poems ‘Crazy Jane talks with a Bishop’ and ‘The Tower’, it is a limited and superficial view which fails to grasp the metaphorical meaning of...

What is literary inheritance? This is a concept that claims that authors receive the works of earlier authors, which they can implement and add on to in their own pieces. This is important for writers and literature, as it helps inspire future...

The reality and concern of human nature and experience is articulated through the universal engagement and timeless literary appeal of William Butler Yeats’ poetry. His poems -‘Easter 1916’, ‘When you are old’ and ‘Leda and the Swan’ - serve as...

The message of “Leda and the Swan” is often interpreted in drastically different ways due to the ambiguity of the text. Much of this ambiguity can be attributed to intentional contradiction by the author, William Butler Yeats. This contradiction...

The relationship between power and love brims with conflict. Introducing a dominant and a surrendering role within the interactions of men and women unequivocally creates opposition between the two. In three different sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt,...

William Butler Yeats was an Irish Nationalist who wrote poetry all his life. His poems had themes of beauty and violence, Maud Gonne and executed freedom fighters. He had philosophies about changing times and the influence of deities, spirits and...

The image of the swan is thoroughly explored throughout Yeats’ poetry, in which it not only heightens the overall textual integrity but also allows the reader to ingest the suggestions that are intricate and simultaneous as posed by each Yeats...

More so than any other Modernist writer, William Butler Yeats’ life and work reveal themselves to be intricately connected and draw on each other in multifarious ways. What makes Yeats’ poetry achieve so much power is the conscious employment of...

The modernism movement has paved way for the present and future of writing in a lot of ways. After World War I had ended, life had changed drastically in contrast to before it had begun. After society had been exposed to the horrific realities of...

The sonnet is unique among poetic forms. Its appeal has spanned five centuries and has managed to keep up with dramatic shifts in literary and philosophical movements during this time. There is a common perception that the sonnet has a requirement...

In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve disobey God by indulging in the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, thus beginning the plague of Adam’s Curse on mankind. This belief postulates that in order to experience even the most minimal pleasures in...

The narrative contained within “The Stolen Child,” a poem written in 1866 by William Butler Yeats, is borrowed from a well-known tale in Irish mythology – that of the Changeling. This myth proposed that fairies would often steal away a human child...

A phantasmagoria of implicit messages, morals, and meanings, William B. Yeats grapples with the chaotic Irish society of the 19th and 20th century in his works. At first, Yeats is full of optimism and affection partly due to meeting his first...