Irish Revival

• aiming at preserving the language and culture

• “Celtic Twilight” W.B. Yeats (writer, poet, playwright) – to wake up cultural awareness of the Irish

• Irish language – language of the poor

• English was obligatory

Ireland – part of UK, fighting for the autonomy, treated as sth accidental partially culture was saved,

Celtic roots: language, literature, mythology, art

Cultural Initiative:

• National theatre – The Abbey Theatre (Dublin) -> 1901

• Lady Augusta Gregory – provided money for the promotion of the Irish drama, playwrights/literature

• Yeats (idea)

The Irish chose the continental tradition, not British one. They were more up-to-date.

Topics:

• Particular problems of the Irish

• Rich costumes, artificial decorations

• Language spoken in the street – contemporary

• Acting was important

• No celebrities, democratic projects

• In English (playwrights didn’t know Irish) even Dublin audience didn’t know Irish

Other playwrights:

• John Millington Synge (he didn’t spread Irish well, his plays were in English

  • “Riders to the sea” – a mythical tragedy based on Niobe, a woman who lost her children to sea

• Seán O'Casey- writes about the life of poor Irish people, (based on his life), a pacifist, his works were full of pity and compassion for human suffering, humorous (a lot of comedies, ironic effects)

• William Butler Yeats

  • Problems with money of church were superficial for him, there was sth deeper

  • Drama should be more profound (god existence, death, meaning of life)

  • He was a mystic (he thought you can commune with souls, reach the world beyond (as Blake said)

  • Art can push people further, open your mind to other works

  • F rench symbolists poetry as his inspiration

  • The idea of symbols:

    • Sea - human life as a journey

    • Harp – symbol of poetry

    • Boat – our existence inspiration

  • Japanese theatre – Noh plays (dance masked plays, short, few acts, no imitation of reality, bare scenery, clothes not of of ordinary people, monologues, recitations of words just

speaking, no action)

• His plays were not for simple, ordinary people, they were elitist, commercially a total disaster, they made people think

• “The Land of Heart's Desire”

• Yeat’s Poetry:

  • Symbolic, some imagery

  • “The second coming”, “Sailing to Byzantium”

  • Poetry can be a way of understanding and transgressing one’s mind

  • Love poems

• A book: “A Vision”

WYKŁAD 14

The literature of Ideas

• End of Victorian period

• A type of literature used as a vehicle/means for conveying ideas

• Mixed form: literature+ideas

• There should be balance in a text, not only ideas ( this would be just an essay) and not only literature (only stupid novel)

Plato “Dialogues” – philosophical bodies with literary shape, ideas dominate in the dialogues of characters e.g. “Feast” – protagonist, setting, plot, but what they talk is the most important

Predecessor: Thomas Love Peacock

• novels of ideas,

• the same scheme in all his works, group of people (4-5) who meet somewhere, drink, eat, and talk <- it is most important what they talk about

• key characters – masked characters (real famous people of his times)

• typical characters, but they discuss religion, art politics

• his works:

  • “Nightmare Abbey”

  • “Crotchet Castle”