Odin's Court

Poem in the style of W. B. Yeats' "The Song of Wandering Aengus." Based on Norse mythology

William Butler Yeats: Nationalism, Mythology, and the New Irish Tradition

William Butler Yeats has been regarded as one of the most important poets of the modern era. His poetry is known throughout the world for its attention to form, masterful imagery, and its distinctly Irish nature. Always a patriot, much of Yeats’ life was devoted to the resurrection of Irish culture in what he hoped would be a Celtic Renaissance free from the heavily political implications of the Irish nationalist movement of his time. This essay seeks to discuss and understand Yeats’ methods and inspirations behind conveying his nationalism and love of Irish lore through his poetry, especially in his earlier years of publication. He was concerned not just with people’s knowledge of Ireland and her storied past, but also with the cultural wellbeing of Ireland’s future, especially when it came to fostering future Irish artists and creative types. This essay examines seven works by Yeats organized into three sections, each individual section representing a different point in his creative journey towards finding his voice for Ireland’s future writers and artists. His hope was to foster the creation of a literary tradition that was Irish in its roots for the entertainment, advancement, and representation of a thoroughly Irish people. This paper seeks to discover how exactly he went about attempting to create such a tradition

Aspects of King MacLain in Eudora Welty\u27s The Golden Apples

ASPECTS OF KING MACLAIN IN EUDORA WELTY’S THE GOLDEN APPLES by James Shimkus Under the Direction of Pearl A. McHaney ABSTRACT Much of the scholarship on Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples focuses on Welty’s use of folklore and myth, particularly as presented in several of W. B. Yeats’s poems. The character King MacLain is most often associated with Zeus, Perseus, and Aengus. A close examination of King MacLain’s development during Welty’s composition and revision of The Golden Apples reveals associations between King and other figures from myth and folklore, including Odin, Loki, Finn MacCool, Brer Rabbit, the King of the Wood from James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, and several types of Irish fairies. The many layers of allusion revealed by studying King MacLain suggest that close studies of other characters in The Golden Apples will illustrate the complexity and scope of Welty’s story-cycle. INDEX WORDS: Eudora Welty, The Golden Apples, King MacLain, Celtic myth, Finn MacCool, Brer Rabbit, The Golden Boug

Entropy and equilibrium in Jean Toomer’s Cane AND The Peasant visionary, the dying God: sacrifice and rebirth in W. B. Yeats’s The wind among the reeds

My reading of Cane is based on Jean Toomer’s use of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics within the text in order to communicate his political aim of a racial equilibrium. Toomer uniquely defined his race as “purely American,” and this was the vision he had hoped to share with the nation by way of his text. He was inspired to write Cane after a stint in Sparta, Georgia, resulted in a formative encounter with what he called the “folk-spirit”—a cultural energy that, even at his first encounter, he found to be degenerating. My research shows that his hope for Cane was to show how the eventual heat-death in the text mirrors his conception of racial equilibrium for the nation. My analysis of the events in Cane shows that Toomer uses his text to lament the folk-spirit that he saw as precious yet inexorably linked to outmoded social and racial models. Toomer sought to dissolve racial barriers through his personal proclamation of his race as purely American, and Cane harbors the creative force of an author freshly inspired by the folk-spirit.My thesis shows that the central theme of Yeats’s The Wind Among the Reeds is one of creation through destruction. My work centers upon one of his lesser-known poems, “The Valley of the Black Pig,” but also focuses on other works from the volume, such as “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” as well as the poem turned play, The Shadowy Waters. I analyze how Yeats’s stylistic choices in his poems and plays reflect his intellectual processes at the time of their composition. The stability of bibliography allows me to read an imaginative context into these works while remaining grounded in evidence that is strongly supported by chronology and publication data. Much of the research that I have done makes use of both published and unpublished manuscripts of Yeats’s poems and plays. The information I glean from early drafts allows me to trace Yeats’s intellectual process through several revisions of each text. Through this method I am able to show that the regenerative cycles of creation through destruction—rebirth via sacrifice—in 1899’s The Wind Among the Reeds are the result of a creative process that Yeats began as early as 1884, with the composition of the earliest unpublished draft of his play The Shadowy Waters. He ultimately finds empowerment and stability of identity through the embodiment of diverse personae throughout his body of work

“Led by the nose”: An Examination of Mythic, Political, and Personal Transformations in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

John Fisher Visits St. John Fisher

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. Driving from Buffalo to New York City in 1990, after appearing in A Moon for the Misbegotten at the former\u27s Studio Arena Theatre, I passed through Rochester and remember thinking what a lovely city it looked like and how unlikely it was that I would ever have occasion to re-visit it. I\u27m very glad to say I was wrong

RWC News, December 1974

https://docs.rwu.edu/alumni_news/1005/thumbnail.jp