Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival

“On that afternoon in the west of Ireland in 1897, Lady Augusta Gregory, the wealthy widow of a County Galway landowner, and a shy, awkward poet from Dublin, William Butler Yeats, sat next to a roaring fire, looking out of large windows lashed by wind and rain, and decided that the time had come for Ireland to have its own theatre“ Felton, R. T. (2007)

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th a movement that would change the history of Ireland’s literature emerged.

Tired of the way in which Irish peasants were being depicted in English theatre, there was a feeling arising, that Celtic culture could be more faithfully portrayed in a way that allowed the world to see how proud Irish people were of Ireland.

This movement has been has also been referred to as the Celtic Twilight, name adopted from the book under the same title by W. B. Yeats.

Yeats is probably one of the most important authors of this movement due to he and Lady Gregory founding the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899, which later originated the Abbey Theatre where many Plays by Irish writers would be performed by Irish actors. One of the most popular plays linked to this movement was actually written by Yeats and Lady Gregory: ‘Cathleen Ni Houlihan’, of which Yeats wrote in ‘The United Irishman’: “My subject is Ireland and its struggle for independence.”

When the idea began to take form, it seemed necessary to seek for supporters, people who were also willing and enthusiastic to give Ireland its own theatre so Lady Gregory claimed: "We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and easy sentiment as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism. We are confident of the support of Irish people, who are weary of misrepresentation" Gregory (1972)

At the time, supporters to this movement used to frequent ‘An Stad’ (The Stop) which was a tobacco shop in Dublin mainly frequented by nationalists like Maud Gonne, and artists like Yeats or even James Joyce, whose writings also revolved around Ireland but not in the same idealistic way as Yeats’, as you probably know, Joyce’s Dubliners portrays Ireland as a place of paralysis and stagnation. The universe described in Dubliners has often been compared with the one in Yeats’ Stories of Red Hanrahan; Joyce is very time-and-place specific, whereas Yeats only informs the reader that the stories take place in rural Ireland.

I would say that it is rather clear how Joyce tries to pronounce a realistic judgment when describing Dublin, while Yeats romanticizes the mystical Irish traditions. In my opinion they are different perspectives but both brilliant in their own way and it is so interesting to contrast the feelings that you are left with when reading Dubliners with mysterious scenery in The Stories of Red Hanrahan.

Finally, I would like to invite you to read The Stories of Red Hanrahan, particularly The Twisting of the Rope and Hanrahan And Cathleen The Daughter Of Houlihan (in that order) if you want to understand a little better this topic. Thank you for reading and I’d be glad to read your comments on the Irish Literary Revival, Red Hanrahan, Dubliners, or any other thing that caught your attention.

“One night I had a dream almost as distinct as a vision, of a cottage where there was well-being and firelight and talk of a marriage, and into the midst of that cottage there came an old woman in a long cloak. She was Ireland herself, that Cathleen ni Houlihan for whom so many songs have been sung and about whom so many stories have been told and for whose sake so many have gone to their death. " Yeats, W. B. (1903)

Bibliography

• Abbey Theatre - Amharclann na Mainistreach. Retrieved May 31, 2015, from http://www.abbeytheatre.ie/behind_the_scenes/article/yeats_on_his_play_cathleen_ni_houlihan
• Byrne, J. P., Coleman, P., & King, J. (2008). Ireland and the Americas: culture, politics, and history: a multidisciplinary encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
• Felton, R. T. (2007). A journey into Ireland's literary revival. Berkeley, CA: Roaring Forties Press.
• Gregory (1972). Our Irish theatre; a chapter of autobiography. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Yeats, W. B. (1903). Where there is nothing: being volume one of Plays for an Irish theatre. London: A.H. Bullen.