Language and identity:Yeats and Synge

Yeats, Cathleen ni Houlihan

Written with Lady Gregory

19021904, Abbey Theatre

– opening performance

Maud Gonne

Historical references

1798, KilallaIrish rebellion helped

by French troupesBritish victory

Historical references

Brian and Clontarf: Battle of Clontaf (1014), between Brian Boru and the King of Leinster

O’Donnells: leaders of the ancient Tryconnell (Donegal)

O’Sullivans: ref. to people living in County Tipperary

Mythological references

Cathleen ni Houlihan (queen or old woman)

Four green fields

John Millington Synge

Fluent in Gaelic >> the language in his dramas.

Aran Islands (Yeats)He wrote six plays,

usually traditional, three-act- dramas.

Most famous: The Playboy of the Western World.

Tragic and comic.

Riders to the Sea (1904)

Place and timePlotCharacters

Riders to the Sea

Symbols and foretelling motives- Michael- the sea- boards and rope- forgetting bread and blessing- „the fearfulest thing” – the grey pony with Michael on its back

Fatalism

Identity

Irish people in the countryTales, legends,(Historical drama)Language

Language and identity

Wicklow, Kerry and Galway dialectsGaelic elements

- Gaelic words- English elements with modified meaning- Idiomatic phrases- Typicalities of the folk-languages- Greetings, oaths, etc.

“Reprisals”

Some nineteen German planes, they say,You had brought down before you died.We called it a good death. TodayCan ghost or man be satisfied?Although your last exciting yearOutweighed all other years, you said,Though battle joy may be so dearA memory, even to the dead,It chases other thought away,Yet rise from your Italian tomb,Flit to Kiltartan cross and stayTill certain second thoughts have comeUpon the cause you served, that weImagined such a fine affair:

“Reprisals”

Half-drunk or whole-mad soldieryAre murdering your tenants there.Men that revere your father yetAre shot at on the open plain.Where may new-married women sitAnd suckle children now? Armed menMay murder them in passing byNor law nor parliament take heed.Then close your ears with dust and lieAmong the other cheated dead.

“Reprisals”

Written in memory of Major Robert GregoryVery direct (rare in Yeats)Real eventsNot a death elegy, butAnger and indignation of the speakerReprisals: those of the British against the

Irish nationalists (esp. Sinn Fein)Black and Tans – attacks against the civilians

“Reprisals”

Gregory: clichés familiar from Yeats’s earlier poems

Cruel reality (vs. Yeats’s hero cult and theory about indifference)