Engl. 591 / 57281

W. B. Yeats and the Celtic Revival

Professor Gregory Castle*Spring Semester 2001*Tuesdays 1:40-4:30 pm

This course will consider Yeats, wearing all of his various masks: poet,playwright, folklorist, storyteller, essayist, book-reviewer, journalistic gadfly, theater manager, mystic, Free State Senator, Anglo-Irish gentleman. The chief cultural context will be the Celtic Revival (aka, the Irish Literary Revival) during the period 1890-1914. In addition to reading Yeats’s works, we will read works by associates of his in the Abbey Theater company (principally John M. Synge and Lady Augusta Gregory) and by other, sometimes competing, Revivalist writers (Douglas Hyde, George Russell, John Eglinton, Stephen Gwynne and George Moore). We will also read excerpts from the works of nineteenth century historians, Celticists and culturalnationalists (like Standish O’Grady, Matthew Arnold, George Sigerson and Charles Gavan Duffy) who influenced Yeats’s Revivalist thinking. Finally, we will read some of the leading figures in Irish studies today on Yeats and the Revival. 

Required Texts 

W. B. Yeats, The Poems and Mythologies

J. M. Synge, Collected Plays and Poems and The Aran Islands

Lady Gregory, Selected Writings

James Joyce, Dubliners

John O'Beirne Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland

Coure packet

All books are available at Varsity Book Exchange, 714 S. College Ave.(480) 967-3253

Course Requirements

Seminar Paper. Students will write a critical or theoretical research paper (approx. 20 pp, exclusive of notes) on a relevant topic. All students must submit a preliminary thesis report (or précis)(3-5 pp.) that substantially outlines the seminar paper no later than week 8, March 6. All papers must include an annotated bibliography of at least 10 secondary sources and must follow the guidelines set forth in the MLA Manual of Style (5th ed.; Hayden Ref.). Seminar papers are due week 15, April 24. At that time, students must also submit an abstract of the paper (no more than 8pp.) to be used in the presentation. The paper represents 70% of the course grade, the presentation another 10%. Critical Responses. All students will write four one page critical responses to selections on the Reserve list. I will make announcements as to specific texts in advance. These are worth 5% each for a total of 20% of the course grade.

Attendance. Attendance is mandatory. Anything beyond one absence can lead to grade reductions of up to one full letter grade. Excessive absence (e.g., 20% of class time) can lead to a failing grade. Excused absences will be considered only on a case-by-case basis. Habitual tardiness will produce the same effects on your grade as unexcused absence.

Course Itinerary

Jan. 16Introduction

Jan. 23Arnold, Yeats and the Celtic Revival

Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland

O’Grady, from The History of Ireland, vol. II (CP)

Arnold, from The Study of Celtic Literature(CP)

Yeats, “The Celtic Element in Literature” (HR)

______________

Recommended: Fleming, “‘A man who does not exist” (ch. 1) (HR)

Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (HR)

Jan. 30Irish Cultural Nationalism and the Problem of Revivalism

Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland

Yeats, “Nationality and Literature” (HR)

Duffy, “The Revival of Irish Literature”(CP)

Hyde, “The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland”(CP)

Sigerson, “Irish Literature”(CP)

______________

Recommended: Curtis, Apes and Angels

Gibbons, “Race Against Time” in Transformations (HR)

Dean, Celtic Revivals (HR)

Howes, Yeats's Nations (HR)

Feb. 6Yeats, Fairy-Faith and the “Celtic Twilight” Mood of Revivalism

Yeats, The Celtic Twilight (in Mytholgoies); poetry through Wind on the Reeds. Review of Hyde’s Beside the Fire and “Irish Fairies, Ghosts, Witches, etc.” (HR). Introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland (HR).

Fleming, “‘A man who does not exist” (ch. 2) (HR)

______________

Recommended: Yeats, folklore essays in Uncollected Prose, Vol. 2, pp. 54-70, 74-87, 94-108, 167-183, 219-236, 267-282

Evans-Wentz, Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (HR)

Hirsch, “The Imaginary Irish Peasant” 

Feb. 13Revivalism and the Problem of Cultural Translation

Lady Gregory, sections on “Folklore and Translations from the Irish” and “Irish Saga and Romance” (55-285)

McDiarmid and Waters, Introduction to Selected Writings (xi-xliv) 

Feb. 20Yeats’s Folkloric Fictions and the Bardic Ideal

Yeats, Stories of Red Hanrahan, The Secret Rose, “Rosa Alchemica,” “The Tables of the Law,” “The Adoration of the Magi” (in Mytholgoies). Texts on reserve: review of Sophie Bryant’s Celtic Ireland (Uncoll. Prose, vol.1)

O’Grady, from The History of Ireland, vol. II (CP)

Bergin, from Irish Bardic Poetry(CP)

Feb. 27Revivalism and the Irish Literary Theater Movement

Yeats, On Baile’s Strand, At the Hawks Well, The Countess Cathleen, Land of the Heart’s Desire (CP)

Eglinton, et al. Literary Ideals in Ireland (CP)

______________

Recommended: Frazier, Behind the Scenes (HR)

Saddlemyer, ed., Theatre Business (HR)

Mar 6Representing the Irish Peasantry

Lady Gregory, plays from Selected Writings

______________

Recommended: Knapp, “Irish Primitivism and Imperial Discourse: Lady Gregory’s Peasantry” (HR)

Mar. 13Spring Break

Mar. 20Revivalist Ethnography in the West of Ireland

Synge, The Aran Islands

______________

Recommended: Haddon and Brown, “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands”

Robinson, “Place/Person/Book: Synge’s The Aran Islands” (HR)

Saddlemyer, “Art, Nature and ‘The Prepared Personality’” (HR)

Mar. 27Cultural Translation and Cultural Performance

Synge, Tinker’s Wedding, Shadow of the Glen and Playboy of the Western World

Asad,“The Concept of Cultural Translation” (HR)

______________

Recommended: Daniel Corkery, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature

Gibbons, “Synge, Country and Wester,” in Transformations (HR)

Kilroy, James, ed. The “Playboy” Riots (HR)

Strand, “The Playboy, Critics”

Tifft, “The Parricidal Phantasm” (HR)

Apr. 3Revising the Revival

Yeats, In the Seven Woods to Wild Swans at Coole; “John M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time” (CP); Per Amica Silentia Lunae (in Mythologies) 

Apr.10Critiquing Revivalism: Joyce’s Revival

Joyce, Dubliners

Gwynne, from To-day and To-morrow in Ireland (CP)

Moore, from Hail and Farewell (CP)

______________

Recommended: Levenson, “Living History in ‘The Dead’” (inJoyce, Dubliners)

Miller, “‘O, she’s a nice lady!’” (inJoyce, Dubliners)

Nolan, James Joyce and Nationalism (HR)

Williams, “No Cheer for the ‘Gratefully Oppressed’”

Apr.17After the Revival: Yeats and Modernism

Yeats, poetry Michael Robartes and the Dancer and The Tower;“Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry,” “Poetry and Tradition” (in Essays and Introductions) (HR)

______________

Recommended: Cullingford, Gender and History in Yeats’s Love Poetry. 

Apr24“Hard-riding country gentlemen”: Yeats’s New Revival

Yeats, The Winding Stair to Last Poems; On the Boiler (HR)

______________

Recommended: Said, “Yeats and Decolonization” (HR)

May 1Class presentations

Eng. 591 Yeats and the Celtic Revival

Spring 2001

Reserve List—Required and Recommended Reading

(For full rserve list for Irish Studies, access through Castle, Eng 494)

Asad, Talal. “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Eds. James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 141-64.

Corkery, Daniel. Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature: A Study. 1931. Rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1965.

Cullingford, Elizabeth. Gender and History in Yeats’s Love Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Curtis, L. P. Apes and Angels : The Irishman in Victorian Caricature. Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

Deane, Seamus. Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature 1880-1980. Winston-Salem: Wake Forest University Press, 1987.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. 1911. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1966.

Fleming, Deborah. “‘A man who does not exist’: The Irish Peasant in the Work of W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Foster, R. F.W. B. Yeats: A Life. Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Frazier, Adrian. Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman, and the Struggle for the Abbey Theatre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Gibbons, Luke. Transformations in Irish Culture. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press; Cork: Cork University Press, 1996.

Haddon, A. C. and C. R. Browne. “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Third Series. Vol. 2 (1891-93): 768-830. I have a copy.

Hirsch, Edward. “The Imaginary Irish Peasant.” PMLA 106 (1991): 1116-33.

Howes, Marjorie. Yeats's Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness. Cambridge, Engl.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Kilroy, James, ed. The “Playboy” Riots. Dublin: The Dolmen Press, 1971.

Knapp, James. “Irish Primitivism and Imperial Discourse: Lady Gregory’s Peasantry.” In Macropolitics of Nineteenth-century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism. Eds. Jonathan Arac and Harriet Ritvo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 286-301.

Nolan, Emer. James Joyce and Nationalism. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.

Robinson, Tim. “Place/Person/Book: Synge’s The Aran Islands.” In J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands. Ed. Tim Robinson. London: Penguin, 1992. vii-l. I have a copy.

Saddlemyer, Ann. “Art, Nature and ‘The Prepared Personality’: A Reading of The Aran Islands and Related Writings.” In A Centenary Tribute to John Millington Synge 1871-1909: Sunshine and The Moon’s Delight. Ed. S. B. Bushrui. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972. 107-20.

-----, ed. Theatre Business. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982.

Said, Edward. “Yeats and Decolonization.” In Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.

Strand, Ginger. “The Playboy, Critics, and the Enduring Problem of the Audience.” In Assessing the Achievement of J. M. Synge. Ed. Alexander G. Gonzalez. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. 10-23.

Tifft, Stephen. “The Parricidal Phantasm: Irish Nationalism and the Playboy Riots.” In Nationalisms and Sexualities. Eds. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaege. New York: Routledge, 1992. 313-32.

Williams, Trevor. “No Cheer for the ‘Gratefully Oppressed’ in Joyce’s Dubliners.” Style 25.3 (Fall 1991): 416-38.

Yeats, W. B. “The Celtic Element in Literature.” In Essays and Introductions. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1968. 173-88.

-----. The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats. New Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1953.

-----. “John M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time.” In Essays and Introductions. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1968.311-42.

-----. “Nationality and Literature.” In Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats. Vol. 1 (1886-96). John P. Frayne, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. 273-84

-----. On the Boiler (1939). In The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. Vol. 5. Ed. Willam H. O’Donnell. New York: Scribners, 1994. 220-51.

-----. “Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry” (65-95), “Poetry and Tradition” (246-60) in Essays and Introductions. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1968.

-----. Review of Hyde’s Beside the Fire and “Irish Fairies, Ghosts, Witches, etc.” In Uncoll. Prose, vol.1; 174?

-----. Senate Speeches. Ed. Donald R. Pearce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960.

-----, ed. Introduction. Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, New York: Macmillan, 1986.

Eng 591 Yeats and the Celtic Revival—Course Packet

Professor Gregory Castle * Spring 2001

1. On the Study of Celtic Literature, by Matthew Arnold, (c) 1903 by Macmillan, pages 80-111

2. The History of Ireland, vol. I, by Standish O'Grady, (c) 1878 by E. Ponsonby, pages i-xxi

3. The History of Ireland, vol. II, by Standish O'Grady, (c) 1880 by E. Ponsonby, pages 1-34

4. The Revival of Irish Literature: Addresses by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, by Dr. George Sigerson and Dr. Douglas Hyde, (c) 1894 by Fisher Unwin, pages 9-59, 61-114, 115-161,

5. Irish Bardic Poetry, by Osborn Bergin, (c) 1970by Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, pages 3-22

6. Literary Ideals in Ireland, by John Eglinton, (c) 1899 by T. F. Unwin, pages 9-90

7. The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats, (c) 1953 by Macmillan, pages 1-47, 135-145, 162-182

8. To-day and To-morrow in Ireland: Essays on Irish Subjects, by Stephen Gwynn, (c) 1903 by Hodges, Figgis and Co., pages 1-37

9. Hail and Farewell, by George Moore, (c) 1925 by D. Appleton and Co., pages 282-321

Arnold, Matthew. “On the Study of Celtic Literature.” From On the Study of Celtic Literature. In The Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. 5. London: Macmillan, 1903. vii-xxi, 80-111.

Bergin, Osborn, Irish Bardic Poetry, David Greene and Fergus Kelly (eds.), 1912, Rpt. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1970. 3-22

Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan. “The Revival of Irish Literature.” In The Revival of Irish Literature: Addresses by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G., Dr. George Sigerson, and Dr. Douglas Hyde. London: Fisher Unwin, 1894.9-59.

Eglinton,John, et al. Literary Ideals in Ireland. London: T. F. Unwin, 1899.9-90. Includes essays by Eglinton, Yeats, AE, and others. 

Gwynn, Stephen. To-day and To-morrow in Ireland: Essays on Irish Subjects. Dubling: Hodges, Figgis and Co., 1903. 1-37

Hyde, Douglas. “The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland.” In The Revival of Irish Literature: Addresses by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G., Dr. George Sigerson, and Dr. Douglas Hyde. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1894.115-61.

Moore, George. From Hail and Farewell. Vol. II. 1912, 1914. Rpt. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1925. 282-321

O’Grady, Standish. The History of Ireland. 2 Vols. London: Sampson Low, Searle, Marston and Rivington; Dublin: E. Ponsonby, 1878, 1880. From Vol. I iii-xx; from Vol. II 1-34.

Sigerson, George. “Irish Literature: Its Origin, Environment, and Influence.” In The Revival of Irish Literature: Addresses by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G., Dr. George Sigerson, and Dr. Douglas Hyde. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1894. 61-114.

Yeats,W. B. “The Celtic Element in Literature.” In Essays and Introductions. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1968. 173-88.

-----. “John M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time.” In Essays and Introductions. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1968. 311-42.

-----. “Nationality and Literature.” In Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats. Vol. 1 (1886-96). John P. Frayne, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. 273-84

-----. On Baile’s Strand, At the Hawks Well, The Countess Cathleen, Land of the Heart’s Desire. In The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats, New York: Macmillan, 1953.