- Born in Dublin, buried under Ben Bulben and was Irish
- Triedto establish an Irish Theatrical tradition with his friend Lady Gregory
- Was a Senator of the Irish Free State
- Full of references to Irish mythology, countryside, history and contemporary politics
- Felt himself to be out of the mainstream of Irish life - Born into a protestant family, spoke English not Gaelic, lived most of early life in London with only holidays in Ireland
- Quarrels with the Ireland he knew and his desire to create an Ireland to which he could be proud to belong
- Conflicting feelings eg Innisfree is earthly paradise and Coole Park is an oasis of civilised life, but in The People and September 1913 he presents Ireland negatively
- Yeats wrote Ireland: he 'invented a country, calling it Ireland' (Denis Donoghue) eg in The Municipal Gallery Revisited where actual Ireland has been replaced by one brought into existence by poets
- Yeats' Irealnd has a geographical identity
- Cared about the Irish traditions maintained by the great country houses where a largely Protestant aristocracy maintained standards of literary and artistic sophistication
- Designates people as founders of Irish culture and history, including Ireland's poetic heritage - Raftery, Synge and politicians like Wolfe Tone and Edward Fitzgerald
Easter Rising:
- Easter 1916 and Sixteen Dead Men
- Gives Ireland identity by writing about the events that brought the Irish Free State into being
- Easter 1916 - Patrick Pearse taking over the Dublin Post Office, which could never be successful, and Yeats implies that it was the folly and thrill of that action that was genuinely Irish which excited the people
- Conveys the change in thought and feeling
- Complexities of politics and what political involvement can do to people
- People in the rising as hard, purposeful, resilient, stable
- Them as fanatics?
Relationship between poet and audience:
- Aware of himself as a poet who speaks
- Wants audience who knows how to listen
- Wanted to speak out of and to the experience of the Irish People
- Aware that Irish People didn't always listen
Women and love: - Many of his poems originated from actual events
- Most important relationship in his life was with Irish actress Maud Gonne
- He proposed to her at least 6 times but was always rejected
- Desired but unattainable woman
- Yeats never names her
- Great beauty is ascrribed to her 'loveliest woman born'
- Ledaean - the daughter of Leda and Zeus was Helen of Troy
- Tradition of presenting unobtainable women as fairies- beautiful, alluring, potentially destructive
Info gathered from 'W.B.Yeats Selected Poems'
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