Context — Irish Identity and Historical Change (HSC SSCE English Advanced): Revision Notes

Context — Irish Identity and Historical Change

W.B. Yeats wrote during one of the most turbulent periods in Irish history, when Ireland was fighting for independence from Britain whilst simultaneously searching for its cultural identity. His selected poems respond to revolutionary violence, cultural revival movements, and his own experiences of aging and political change. Understanding the historical and personal contexts behind these seven poems is essential for appreciating how Yeats used mythic imagery to process the upheaval around him.

Historical context: Easter Rising and Irish Revolution (1916-1923)

The Easter Rising (1916)

The Easter Rising took place from 24-29 April 1916, when Irish republican leaders including Patrick Pearse and James Connolly seized buildings in Dublin in an armed rebellion against British rule. The Rising was suppressed by British forces, and the leaders were executed by firing squad. This event became a turning point in Irish history, transforming public opinion towards independence.

Easter 1916 directly addresses these executed leaders. Yeats writes:

I write it out in a verse— / MacDonagh and MacBride / And Connolly and Pearse

The poem captures Yeats's complex response to the Rising. He commemorates the rebels' vivid faces that once walked Dublin's ordinary streets, but questions the cost of their sacrifice: "Was it needless death after all?" The famous refrain "a terrible beauty is born" expresses this ambivalence—acknowledging both the horror of violence and the birth of something transformative.

War of Independence and Civil War

Following the Rising, Ireland entered the War of Independence (1919-1921) against Britain, followed by a bitter Civil War (1922-1923) between those who accepted and those who rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty. This treaty resulted in the partition of Ireland: 26 southern counties gained independence whilst 6 northern counties remained under British control.

The Second Coming (1919) responds to the post-Rising chaos. The poem's apocalyptic imagery—"Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer"—suggests civilisation spiralling out of control. The "blood-dimmed tide" and the "rough beast" slouching towards Bethlehem represent Yeats's fear that revolutionary violence was unleashing dark, uncontrollable forces.

World War I context

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (1918) was written as a eulogy for Robert Gregory, Lady Gregory's son, who died flying for Britain during World War I. This poem reflects Ireland's complicated position during the war—officially neutral but with divided loyalties. Some Irish nationalists, like John Redmond's National Volunteers, fought for Britain hoping to secure Home Rule. Others, like Roger Casement's rebels, actively opposed British involvement.

The Airman's motivation transcends political allegiances:

A lonely impulse of delight / Drove to this tumble of the sea and air

His choice is existential and personal, beyond considerations of "public right or wrong." This reflects the divided Irish response to the war and questions of national duty.

Contemporary violence in other poems

The Wild Swans at Coole (1916) was written just as news of the Easter Rising reached Yeats. Whilst the poem doesn't directly mention the Rising, it contrasts the timeless swans at Coole Park—"Their hearts have not grown old"—with the poet's own "sore" heart. This juxtaposition suggests an awareness of encroaching violence and change threatening the peaceful Irish landscape.

Irish Literary Revival and cultural nationalism (1890s-1920s)

The Abbey Theatre and Celtic revival

In 1904, Yeats co-founded the Abbey Theatre with Lady Gregory and J.M. Synge. Their goal was to revive Celtic myths and Irish cultural traditions as a counter to British cultural dominance. They believed Ireland needed its own authentic cultural voice, drawing on ancient legends and folklore rather than imitating English culture.

However, the Revival faced resistance. When Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World premiered in 1907, it caused riots because Catholic nationalists felt it insulted Irish people. This showed the tension between the Protestant intellectuals leading the Revival and the Catholic majority they claimed to represent.

The phrase "companionable streams" in The Wild Swans at Coole evokes the idyllic Sligo countryside of Yeats's childhood, representing an idealised Irish pastoral tradition. Similarly, Sailing to Byzantium references the "gold mosaic" of Byzantine art as a symbol of eternal artistic achievement—suggesting art transcends political turmoil.

Yeats's Anglo-Irish Protestant identity

Yeats belonged to the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority—descendants of English settlers who formed Ireland's landowning class. This gave him an outsider status in an increasingly Catholic, nationalist Ireland. His childhood in Sligo and his patronage relationships with aristocratic families like the Gregorys connected him to a dying ascendancy class.

Yeats served in the Irish Senate from 1922-1928, during the period when Civil War executions were being carried out. This experience of witnessing violence and political chaos as a legislator informed his later work, particularly An Acre of Grass (1939), where he calls for an "old man's frenzy" and "Old man's eagle mind" to cut through the compromises of political life.

A Vision and the gyres system

In 1925, Yeats published A Vision, an occult philosophical system supposedly derived from his wife Georgie's automatic writing (writing whilst in a trance state). This system structures human history as gyres—interlocking cone shapes that spiral through 2,000-year civilisations. According to this theory, as one gyre expands, another contracts, bringing revolutionary change.

The Second Coming explicitly uses gyric imagery. The "widening gyre" represents the Christian civilisation spinning out of control, about to be replaced by a new, darker era represented by the "rough beast" slouching towards Bethlehem. This mystical framework allowed Yeats to see contemporary Irish violence as part of a larger cosmic pattern of historical change.

Cultural continuity in later poems

Long-legged Fly (1938) asserts Irish cultural importance by placing Irish figures (his daughter Anne Yeats typing) alongside Julius Caesar and Michelangelo. The poem's refrain—"That civilisation may not sink"—expresses anxiety about preserving culture amid 1930s fascist threats in Europe. Yeats argues that quiet moments of concentration are what preserve civilisation through turbulent times.

Personal context: Aging, politics, and relationships

Confronting mortality (age 50-70)

Yeats wrote many of these poems during middle and late age (his 50s through 70s), and themes of aging and mortality permeate the work. In The Wild Swans at Coole, the poet counts "nine-and-fifty" swans and contrasts their vitality with his own "scatter[ing]" heart. The swans remain unchanged over nineteen years, but the poet has aged and lost his former passions.

Sailing to Byzantium (1927) explicitly rejects the "sensual music" of youth. The famous opening describes aging harshly:

An aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon a stick

The poem seeks transformation through art—the speaker wants to become a golden mechanical bird that sings eternally, escaping physical decay through artistic immortality.

After heart surgery in 1930, Yeats's late poems take on a more defiant, shamanic quality. An Acre of Grass demands:

Grant me an old man's frenzy... / Old man's eagle mind

This represents a refusal to accept gentle aging, instead claiming a fierce, visionary intensity for his final years.

Personal losses and relationships

The year 1916 marked several personal losses for Yeats. His long-time muse Maud Gonne, whom he'd proposed to repeatedly, married another man. Lady Gregory experienced profound losses during this period. These personal disappointments compound the historical trauma of the Easter Rising, creating the melancholy tone of The Wild Swans at Coole.

The death of Robert Gregory (Lady Gregory's son) in World War I prompted An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. The poem's meditation on choice and fate—the airman driven by "a lonely impulse of delight"—reflects Yeats's attempt to find meaning in a senseless death.

Political evolution

Yeats's political views evolved considerably across his lifetime. In his youth, he was a romantic nationalist who sympathised with Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell. However, his experiences serving in the Senate during the Civil War, witnessing executions and political violence, hardened his views.

Easter 1916 demonstrates this complexity. Yeats balances admiration for the rebels' "vivid faces" with caution about their sacrifice becoming prolonged and destructive: "too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart." This reflects his Anglo-Irish Protestant anxiety about Catholic majority rule potentially leading to mob violence and extremism.

By the late 1930s, in Long-legged Fly, Yeats asserts the importance of civilised continuity against both Irish violence and European fascism. The poem values quiet concentration and intellectual achievement over revolutionary action.

Irish identity: Tradition vs. revolution vs. art

The triple identity crisis

Yeats's poems wrestle with three competing visions of Irish identity:

Celtic Revival tradition: Drawing on ancient myths, pastoral landscapes, and folk culture to create an authentic Irish identity rooted in pre-colonial heritage.

Violent revolutionary separatism: The physical force tradition represented by the Easter Rising rebels who sought independence through armed rebellion.

Eternal artifice and art: The belief that artistic achievement transcends politics and offers immortality beyond temporal chaos.

How poems navigate these tensions

The Wild Swans at Coole embodies the tension between unchanging natural beauty (representing traditional Ireland) and human turmoil. The swans remain constant whilst the poet and his nation undergo violent transformation.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death prioritises personal honour and existential choice over nationalist duty. The Airman fights for neither "public right or wrong" but for a "lonely impulse," suggesting individual authenticity matters more than political allegiance.

Easter 1916 acknowledges that revolutionary violence can create "terrible beauty"—something simultaneously horrific and transformative—but questions the cost. The rebels earn transformation into legend, but Yeats asks whether their sacrifice was necessary.

The Second Coming warns that revolutionary violence births monsters rather than utopias. The apocalyptic imagery suggests that destroying the old order doesn't guarantee something better will replace it—instead, a "rough beast" may emerge.

Sailing to Byzantium, An Acre of Grass, and Long-legged Fly assert that artistic immortality offers the truest transcendence. Rather than choosing between tradition and revolution, these poems suggest art preserves what's valuable whilst transcending temporal political chaos.

Protestant minority perspective

Throughout these poems, Yeats navigates his position as part of Ireland's Protestant minority through universal myth-making. By connecting Irish experiences to classical mythology (Caesar, Michelangelo), biblical imagery (Bethlehem), and Byzantine art, he elevates Irish concerns to universal human themes. This allows him to claim Irish identity whilst maintaining critical distance from Catholic nationalist movements.

Key quotes organised by historical period

Easter Rising (1916)

• "Vivid faces... terrible beauty" (Easter 1916)
• "Was it needless death after all?" (Easter 1916)
• "I write it out in a verse— / MacDonagh and MacBride / And Connolly and Pearse" (Easter 1916)
• "Their hearts have not grown old" (The Wild Swans at Coole)
• "nine-and-fifty swans" (The Wild Swans at Coole)

World War I (1918)

• "A lonely impulse of delight / Drove to this tumble of the sea and air" (An Irish Airman Foresees His Death)
• "Kiltartan's poor" (An Irish Airman Foresees His Death)

Civil War and gyres (1919)

• "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer" (The Second Coming)
• "blood-dimmed tide" (The Second Coming)
• "rough beast" (The Second Coming)

Late period: Art and transcendence (1927-1939)

• "An aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon a stick" (Sailing to Byzantium)
• "gold mosaic" (Sailing to Byzantium)
• "sensual music" (Sailing to Byzantium)
• "Grant me an old man's frenzy... / Old man's eagle mind" (An Acre of Grass)
• "That civilisation may not sink" (Long-legged Fly)
• "typewriter clicking" (Long-legged Fly)

Exam tips for contextualisation

Essential terminology: Use subject-specific terms like "gyric imagery", "anaphoric refrain", "montage structure", and "daimonic autonomy" to demonstrate sophisticated understanding.

Integrate 7-9 quotations per paragraph: Support every contextual claim with textual evidence. Connect historical triggers to specific techniques to specific poetic effects.

Remember!