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Essay on Achilles

In this essay I will talk about Achilles in mythology and literature. Throughout this essay I will use and reference Pantelis Michelakis' book Achilles in Greek Tragedy, Bain's book The Prologues of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis', Barchiesi's book Simonides and Horace on the death of Achilles, Sofocles's book entitled Philoctetes, Homer's book Iliad, Aeschylus’s books Myrmidons, Nereids, and Phrygians.

According to Pantelis Michelakis, in ancient Greco-Roman times, Achilles enjoyed a long history as a mythological figure that extended beyond the Iliad. The Tragedy appropriated Achilles to address concerns regarding his Era such as heroism, education, and even individualism. Achilles is dramatized as both a model and a problem, and has been honored as a cult hero in many parts of the Greek world. As such ,cult associations and religious associations made to Achilles in relation to individual areas had a political dimension, the traces of which can be detected in some references to Achilles in literature and art. In the late seventh century, the Mytileneans began a long war against the Athenians for the possession of the Troad. The Mytileneans used as base of operations a fort called Achilleion, because for them Achilles was a hero of great importance and his sanctuary served as central in both the literal and the figurative sense. Achilles was also honored as a cult hero in Magna Graecia. Another literary representation of Achilles is that of Simonides' poem , where Simonides describes Achilles as a cult hero through religious discourse and the panhellenic narratives of Homeric poetry. In so doing, Simonides used Achilles to blur the distinctions between poetic and cult immortalization, and thus facilitate the heroization of the war dead through different and complementary modes of commemoration.There is a paradox in the Achilles-related traditions: As a literary figure, he had enormous panhellenic significance, but his cults were associated with places on the periphery of the Greek world, and not with any of the city-states in the center.As a literary figure, Achilles appears in many epic narratives. The Iliad covers a limited period of time and provides a complex portrait of the hero engaging with different mythological episodes, themes, and traditions. In the Iliad, Achilles is the son of a goddess, yet he is a mortal. He fights the Scamander River and competes with the god Apollo, but his short, sad life is a condition for his central role in the poem. It is invaluable to the Achaeans, but it is also their biggest problem. Its centrality in the poem is marked by its physical ability, but also by its absence on the battlefield and its reasoning and strong emotions.He is a simple and admirable speaker and a bloodthirsty warrior, but he is also a symbol of humanity. He has Briseis as a gift of honor, but he loves her as if she were his wife.No matter how complex the portrait of Achilles provided by the Iliad, there are many mythological episodes and character traits of Achilles that the poem does not include: his upbringing by Chiron, his fatherhood of Neoptolemus, his duel with Telephus in Mysia, and many others. .One of the most striking features of these episodes is the persistent exploration of Achilles as a warrior and lover. In the poems of the Cycle, Achilles encounters many enemies, including the son of a god, an unarmed teenager, and an amazon. If the Iliad promotes a solemn vision of its short protagonist, the cyclical poems seem to affirm the importance of the hero through successive episodes of glory and triumph.

In the classical Athens, the only reference to Achilles as a cult hero comes from Euripides. In contrast to epic heroes whose cults in the Greek tragedy were linked to issues of ethnic identity, Achilles never became a suitable vehicle for Athenian self-identification as a collective group.Achilles' popularity as a mythological figure in classical Athens is also witnessed by the hero's representations in art. Its popularity with the dramatists of classical Athens persisted from Aeschylus's Achilleis trilogy to the tragic and comic poets of the fourth century. Sophocles dramatized episodes of Achilles' biography in plays such as Ajax and Philoctetes. Achilles appeared on the Athenian stage in about twenty-five pieces and was mentioned in another fifty, but nevertheless, of the pieces named after Achilles, only a few fragments of Sophocles's “Achilles lovers” survived. Among Achilles' dramatic depictions, only Achilleis of Aeschylus seems to have had a major impact on classical Athens. After Aeschylus, the playwrights did not seem to deal directly with the Homeric Achilles, but rather sought to redefine Homer's exemplary character by turning his attention to episodes of the mythological biography of Achilles that precedes the episodes dealt with in the Iliad.According to Pantelis Michelakis, when we look at the epic origins of the Athenian tragedy, the reasons for absence and death are fundamental to the Odyssey, but they also inform the Iliad narrative. The absence of Achilles becomes the subject of a series of tragic plays. Achilles' potential for heroism is explored in a group of tragedies and satirical plays that focus on his childhood and adolescence.The Aeschylus Myrmidons is the first piece of a lost trilogy about Achilles. The Myrmidons show Aeschylus' confident research into the tensions and ambiguities between a powerful individual and his society. Aeschylus reshapes the protagonist of the Iliad as a former fifth-century aristocrat who exposes his self-destructive power before the collective audiences of the Achaeans and the Athenians , and the Nereids with the new Achilles armor, as well as the Achilles armament and his departure to the battlefield to avenge his dead comrade. From being a silent and motionless object in the middle of the stage in the Myrmidons, Achilles becomes a formidable warrior on his way out onto the battlefield.The Phrygians show Priam's visit to Achilles and the recovery of Hector's corpse. At the beginning of the Phrygians, Achilles appears as a silent figure, yet he is now in a state of mourning, not anger.Despite their expectations, and those of the dramatic characters, the Euripidean Achilles is unable to impose his will on the play's plot, and to behave like the powerful Achilles of the Iliad .The young Achilles of Iphigenia At Aulis is not a hero. Although the heroic attributes of his mythological origin are evoked throughout the play, they are confined only to unsuccessful plans of action, or projected into the distant future of the glory of Achilles in Troy.Choosing a mythological episode that precedes the peak of Achilles 'career in Troy , Euripides focuses attention on Achilles' failure to assume the heroic traits of his mythological character and explores the implication of that failure for the play's dramatic world and the world inhabited by spectators.In the play Philoctetes, Neoptolemus son of Achilles, comes to Lemnos to steal the arch of Heracles from Philoctetes, because Troy cannot be taken without it. Neoptolemus undertakes to deceive Philoctetes, but in the end he is the victim of his own cunningness and agrees to bring Philoctetes back to Greece, thus abandoning the Achaean army in Troy and giving up his claim to fame. It is only with Heracles's intervention that the myth is saved and Neoptolemus and Philoctetes return to Troy to join the Achaeans. In this play, Achilles serves as a model, as a set of moral values and standards against which his child's behavior is evaluated. In the play's narrative, the role of Achilles is played by Philoctetes, and the armor of Achilles is replaced by the bow of Heracles.

Physically absent, Achilles does not belong to the dramatic world of the play, but to the fictional world of Neoptolemus. The ending of the play offers a new understanding of the concept of heroism, quite different from that assumed by Neoptolemus in the prologue, where the father figure of Achilles was the only one to represent the nobility of the inexperienced young man.The popularity of the themes of the death of Achilles and his youth shows how the dramatists of classical Athens directed attention to heroism as absence, and how they explored the different contexts within which the absence of heroism is idealized and problematized.Ancient Greek literature constantly plays with the double nature of mythological figures, which oscillate between the paradigmatic and the exceptional. Mythological heroes can be benevolent and morally suited to being copied and reproduced. However, they can also be transgressive, ambiguous and problematic. Achilles' representations of tragedy show how a literary figure functions as an imaginary receptacle for conflicting definitions of their own: celebratory or critical, personal or collective, projected on the past, present, or future of the mythic world.

In conclusion, Achilles is popular because it is good to think in connection with the individual and his relationship with his social environment. Achilles demonstrates the concern of Athenian culture with the individual as a starting point and agent of human action. It also shows how the existence and behavior of the individual became the product rather than the source of social relationships and systems of meaning. The different expectations and uses made of Achilles in each of the plays demonstrates some of the various ways in which the individual is imagined in fifth-century Athens : idealized and problematized. It also illustrates the different sets of values and norms of behavior that promote Achilles's appropriation, negotiation, and reinvention.

Bibliography

-Michelakis, Pantelis. (2002) "Achiles in Greek Tragedy", Cambridge classical studies.

-Bain, D. (1977) “The Prologues of Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis”, CQ

-Barchiesi, A. (1996) “Simonides and Horace on the Death of Achilles”, Arethusa

-Sophocles. Philoctetes

-Edwards, A.T. (1985) Achilles in the Odyssey, Konigstein

-Homer “Iliad”

-aeschylus “Myrmidons”

-aeschylus. Nereids

-aeschylus. “Phrygians”

#essay #english lit major #english literature

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awesomelizziethewriter-blog · 5 years

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Essay on Folklore and Mysticism in some of Yeats works

In this essay I will address the way Yeats uses folklore and mysticism in his many works such as plays and poems. In order to do this essay the following books were used : “Folklore and W.B.Yeats:the function of folklore elements in three early plays" by Birgit Bramsback , “Yeats , Philosophy and the Occult” by Matthew Gigson and Neil Mann , and “Music and the Irish Literary Imagination” by Harry White.

Folklore represents the beliefs , legends and customs of common people and the main idea of it is tradition , which is something that is handed from one person to another by memory or written record. Irish legends can be divided into several categories such as cattle-raids , battles , and adventures , but later Irish tales started to be divided into cycles. There are four main cycles : The first one is the Mythological Cycle, which describes the origins of Irish deities, the second one is called the Ulster Cycle (the most famous story in this cycle is the “Tain bo Cuailnge”),the third cycle is called the Fenian Cycle in honor of the hero Finn MacCumhall , the fourth and final cycle is called the Historical Cycle. Yeats often used the first three cycles and never used the last one. Folklore can be divided in three categories : traditional tales , traditional popular belief , and folk poetry. The first category provides us with themes , motifs and symbols. The second category has largely to do with the concept of the Otherworld. The third category sets the tone of the scenes , intensifies emotions and conflicts and also provides us the theme of rebirth and transformation. Yeats devoted most of his time in uniting poetry with magic , and he was responsible for the Celtic revival and worked for the preservation of folklore and its communication to a larger number of people , and the use of it in creative writing. He dreamed that folklore would function as “living organism in a country's literature” and he often mentioned that irish culture had a rich Celtic tradition at its disposal and that irish poets should use these stories and pass them on to listeners all over the world.

To Yeats the word folk meant all the majority of illiterate people of the irish country side and he believed that folklore should be used to “vitalize” literature. One example of this is his poem entitled “By the Roadside” , in which Yeats describes his going one night to “a wide place on the Kiltartan road to listen to some irish songs” where he heard traditional irish songs and saw folk dancing performed. According to him , a poet should listen to storytellers and have access to symbols and stories in Folk imagination which is why he edited many collections of stories such as “Fairy and Folk tales of the Irish Peasantry”.

According to Birgit Bramsbäck , “Yeats drew folklore from two main sources : from his personal work and from material previously adapted or treated in a literary way”. In one of his plays entitled “The Land of Heart's desire” we can find the story of a newly married bride who is taken away to fairyland. In Ireland there are countless tales and legends about meetings between faeries and mortals. In “Irish Fairy and Folk Tales” there are many stories about fairies and humans being taken by them.

There are many types of fairies in the Irish fairy lore with different abilities and characteristics. These include leprechauns, banshees, changelings and many others. The origin of Irish fairies can be dated back to the ancient Celtic beliefs of pagan Gods and supernatural beings. The poem “The Host of the Air” is about the story of a married woman named Bridget who was “tempted away” by fairy pipers. This story takes place near the Heart Lake. Fairy music plays a major part in the play previously mentioned and many beliefs among the Irish country ended up “woven into the play”. The main difference between the tales and his play is that the character named Mary does not see herself as a victim, but as a specifically selected individual whose destiny lies in the Otherworld ( in Yeats early works he was always turning his imagination to the Otherworld and the belief that the veil between the two worlds is very thin). Mary fears and longs for the Otherworld and in her loneliness she thinks and talks about the faeries. The wind in this poem symbolizes the fairy world and Mary longs to be as free as the wind and to be united with the faeries. Yeats presents us with several theories about who the faeries are , and the suggestion that perhaps they are human souls foreshadows Yeats belief in the “Plastic power of the soul”. According to Birgit Bramsbäck, “ Mary's soul is in contact with this invisible world of faeries whose song strikes a familiar note in her soul” and there is very short step between the human world and the fairy world.

In this play Yeats also uses fire symbolism , as the fairy child has the power to change the primroses into flames and they become enchanted “like Nature herself” and the fairy uses them to have power over Mary. We can see that Mary feels divided between these elemental powers and her husband whom she loves ( Yeats uses folk beliefs in the depiction between Mary and her husband and he also uses it to enhance the conflict between the visible world and the invisible one).

In the play , the fairy is symbol of beauty and love ,and the Otherworld is everywhere as Mary hears the fairy's voice in the wind. We can see that this play is full of fairy songs and Mary is clearly drawn to this dream world whose call she keeps hearing in the wind ( in Ireland there has always been a very strong belief in fairy music because people thought that it allured many innocents to fairyland). Yeats was clearly influence by many Irish legends and myths when he wrote the play“The Shadowy Waters” , as there are few elements of black magic and oral lure ( in his drafts he had included more of these elements than he included in the published version). We can see that the mythological tale of “The dream of Oengus” underlies this play because they both share the same theme : a woman that appears to the hero in a dream. In this play there is also the bird symbolism which is present in many other plays and poems by Yeats. According to Birgit Bramsbäk , in “The Shadowy Waters”, “the Otherworld is located at sea and the voyage undertaken by Forgael is a quest for this land and the immortal love to be enjoyed there.” The natural elements in this play such as the sea and the storm are vital symbols because there is a clear association of the storm with the Ever-living. The Otherworld vision relates to love , desire and a hope for immortality. Brigit Bramsbäck also states that “ in this play there is a symbolic use of the combination of wind , spirit , desire and hope but “the vague desires and hopes” are changed into a strong desire to experience love in “immortal fashion”. In this play Yeats portrays the so called visible world as being in constant conflict with the “ideal world” to which specifically selected individuals are drawn. In “The Countess Cathleen” , Yeats tells us the story of Countess Cathleen who is a known figure of Irish legends. According to the legend, when a famine striked Ireland , Satan sent demons to buy the souls of the starving Irish but Cathleen ended up selling her estates and possessions in order to buy the people food and keep them from selling their souls. But in the end Satan defeats her and she chooses to sacrifice herself for the poor people. According to Bramsbäck “The Countess' legendary donation of her worldly possessions takes on an otherworldly aspect in this poem because it suggests that Cathleen, in giving over her body, lets go of her heavy burden. She dances lightly and wisely in the heavens, celebrating her sacrifice and her role in the grand order of the universe.” In this play the countess is meant to represent martyrdom.As we can see there are quite a number of folkloric symbols , legends and ancient tales and myths portrayed in these plays. In the poem entitled “A Fairy Song” , Yeats was inspired by the story of Diarmuid and Gráinne. We can consider this poem to be about the origin of myths. As I have previously mentioned , it is believed that faeries inhabit the mythical world and because of that they are immortal. The cromlech can symbolize 2 things : a portal to the realm of the Faeries , and a monument that immortalizes the lives of Diarmuid and Grania. Therefore we can say that the cromlech is a symbol of transition because in the poem the fairies say that Diarmuid and Grania are “ new from the world” , which means that they have entered the fairy world.

The poem entitled “The Song of Wandering Aengus” is about the life the main character called Aengus who according to the legend belonged to a mythical people who conquered Ireland after having defeated the native tribes of the Fir Bolg. Aengus was considered to be the god of love and youth. In this poem Yeats tells the story of how Aengus fell in love with a girl he had seen in a dream and spent years searching for her , which can be seen as the lifelong search for a soulmate. In the poem entitled “Who Goes With Fergus” , Fergus “represents the archetype of the mystical poet who gives up pursuit of the worldly to seek the spiritual realms.” In this poem Yeats is asking people to pursue the mystic which in this poem is symbolized by the woods , the stars and the sea. The poem “The Rose Upon the Rood of Time” is about the nationalist vision of Ireland symbolized by the rose in this poem. It is believed that the rose also symbolizes Maud Gonne , who was a female revolutionary. In this poem , Yeats promises to sing about some ancient figures , namely druids, who were considered to be very important figures in Ireland.He also promises to sing of “Cuchulain, the hound of Culain”,the hero of Irish myth cycles.

In the poem “Byzantium” , Yeats describes the realm of spirits in which we can see that the world of spirits is a dark place because the speaker does not know who or what he is looking at. In conclusion , Yeats deeply believed in the interaction between folklore and literature and explored the living traditions as well as the tales of many generations before and used numerous symbols such as faeries , animals and natural elements to create an arcane world of magic , and it was his deep interest in spiritualism, Irish myths and legends, and his celebration of Irish culture that we are able to see in many of his works. Yeats exploration of the esoteric helped him to get access to this primary field of consciousness and imagination. According to Yeats “the borders of our mind are always shifting, and many minds can flow into one another and create or reveal, a single energy ,and our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself and this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols.”

Bibliography:

“Folklore and W.B.Yeats:the function of folklore elements in three early plays" by Birgit Bramsback.

“Yeats , Philosophy and the Occult” by Matthew Gigson and Neil Mann.

“Music and the Irish Literary Imagination” by Harry White.

“W.B. Yeats and the music of poetry” by Harry White.

“By the roadside” by Yeats

“The Land of Heart's desire” by Yeats

“The Host of the Air” by Yeats

“The Shadowy Waters” by Yeats

“The Countess Cathleen” by Yeats

“A Fairy Song” by Yeats

“The Song of Wandering Aengus” by Yeats

“Who Goes With Fergus” by Yeats

“The Rose Upon the Rood of Time” by Yeats

#english literature #english lit major #mysticism

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awesomelizziethewriter-blog · 5 years

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Essay on Irish Identity

In order to do this essay the following books were used and consulted : “The Question of Irish Identity in the Writings of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce” by Eugene O'Brien , “Yeats's Nations:Gender , Class and Irishness” by Marjorie Howes,“The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce” by Derek Attridge , “Nationalism in Ireland” by George Boyce , “Celtic Revivals” by Seamus Deane , “The Cambridge History of Irish Literature” by Margaret Kelleher , and “The Course of Irish History” by T.W. Moody.

In this essay I will address the issue of Irish Identity and its history and I will also briefly mention how James Joyce and William Butler Yeats influenced Irish identity. The Irish literary revival was a milestone in the creation of the Irish identity as Kevin Whelan believed that by using an idealized past to destroy a decadent present , people would create a binding image of identity.

The use of the celtic notion of tradition as an embodiment of the past became the foundation upon which the notions of Irish identity were built. According to Eugene O'Brien , “the difficulties of contemporary history , the binarism of Protestant and Catholic ,loyalist and republican , unionist and nationalist , English speaking and Irish speaking could be “annealed” in the enculturation of Irish sounding names of the land and in an appeal to a pre-historical notion of Celtism”. The latter revival was an attempt to provide a paradigm of Irish identity which included religion, language and celtism. From the earlier revival the Celtic heroism became a traditional theme of identity which was admired by both catholics and protestants alike . Heroism , warrior honour , courage and loyalty to one's country were used to characterize the fundamental identity of the Irish revival , as did the very image of Ireland before the invasion by England ,as a prelapsarian Eden. The literature that was produced by this vision of identity is focused inwardly on the received traditions and ideas of “Irishness” and it caused great political implications on the notion of identity that came with the Gaelic revival.

These elements were combined to form a centre towards which all writings were directed and the apotheosis of this aestheticizing of political matters was later found in the writings of Pearse , who was one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising (Rebellion). Pearse's writings gave voice to the essence of Irish identity ,and the aestheticization of political ideas was a typical revivalist trend. The past had already defined Irishness , and the contemporary function of literature was to preserve all the passed down traditions.The relationship between people , language and land was seen as motivational which was definitely a defining factor in the creation of the notion of Irish identity and this notion allied to similar ideas of language and religion functioned as a centre in terms of a structure of ideas.

In James Joyce's book entitled “ Portrait of an artist as a young man” , the character of Davin stands as a synecdoche for Irish nationalism. He carries around a book with him which is essentially a Fenian manual of arms which tells us that Davin is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. This group believed that the Irish people wanted to separate themselves from Britain and that the Fenians were right to accomplish this by force. James Joyce ended up rebelling against this fundamentalist strand in Irish republicanism. The Gaelic , Celtic , Irish and Catholic “nexus” of Irish identity is a construct because it was created by a selective reading of history as people focused on key aspects of that tradition so that it appeared to be the essence of Irishness. By constantly looking inwards towards this essentialized centre people ended up turning their backs to all outside influences which prevented them from making any progress and develop new ideas. This focus on the past meant that identity was always on the defensive against modernity and developments.

However , literature was in fact a major example of the power of language. James joyce's character of Stephen Dedalus feels the call of other cultures and he clearly wants to leave Ireland but not as a way of escape but as a way to express “the uncreated conscience of his race”. The meeting of Stephen and Davin is paralleled by the events of the late eighteenth century where the Defenders and the United Irishmen collided as they were both determined to achieve political independence for Ireland but they had a very different view on Irish identity. The United Irish definition of Irish identity was a secular one where all Irish people were to be united in terms of their common Irishness as opposed to their differing political and religious allegiances. The Defender's view of identity was the exact opposite as they believed that to be Irish one had to be Catholic. The insurrectionists of 1916 led by Pearse invoked Tone and the United Irishmen as progenitors of Irish republicanism. There is a particular passage in James joyce's work entitled “ Portrait of an artist as a young man” where we can see that it portrays an image of a fixed Irishness and an Ireland which needs to be protected against all outside influences. In “Dubliners” Joyce uses the character of Miss Ivors to imply that if someone is interested in anything outside of Ireland than that person is not Irish. One of the main problems in Irish identity was the language, because in the nineteenth century the English language had replaced the Irish language as the general means of communication in Ireland. Historically speaking , it is believed that the Celtic inhabitants of early Ireland spoke some form of Irish , and in the later centuries , Irish was the spoken language of that country , so the Irish language is the real language of Irish myth and history. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Gaelic poets used the Irish language as a symbol of the continuity between their situation and the central role of the poet in Gaelic society. We can see that the very act of writing in Irish was their attempt at preserving their sense of poetic and cultural pre-invasion purity. The opposition of Irish and English language soon became an idealogical one , because people who chose the English language were embracing the foreign culture , and those who chose the Irish language were embracing the continuity of the past. Therefore , the term “Irish revival” refers to a movement which came into being in Ireland towards the end of the nineteenth century and it usually encompasses the term “Gaelic revival”. The difference between these two revivals is that the first one refers to all things Celtic , and the second one refers to to the Irish language. The literary revival refers to the creation of a literature that validated a separate Irish identity. According to Eugene O'brien , “ the real Ireland was envisaged as Gaelic and it was here that the political agenda of the revivalists came into focus”, therefore we can assume that what was involved in this matter was the hidden politicization of the learning of the irish language , as this language was not just a means of communication but a “transcendental” signifier of an attitude towards Irishness which saw the Irish race as a “syncretism of Gaelic , catholic and nationalist with very little room in Ireland for any that were outside of that trinitarian value structure”. So , we can assume that both the Gaelic and the Irish language revival movements planted the seeds for the cultural , religious and political exclusion of the Protestant tradition in Ireland. As we have been able to see, the idea of a separate identity is very difficult to categorize but towards the end of the nineteenth century the language problem was becoming a major issue again as people wanted to separate de English language from the Irish language. The key figures in the literary revival were Yeats , Synge , and Lady gregory , and they all wrote in english so it is safe to say that they established a “benchmark” for all future expressions of Irish identity. They all tried to invoke the fundamental markers of identity , old Irish myths and the topography of the landscape, and from then on the mythic material of Ireland was read in translation. However , by writing in English about these Irish subjects they were also acknowledging the presence of an “other” in the origin of the Irish identity.

When Yeats and Joyce voiced an alternative Irishness , they took an ethical stand by introducing “an alterity into Irishness as it was defined in terms of sameness , as well as offering an implied critique of essentialist conceptions of identity”.

When Yeats wrote his early poems , he dealt with Greece and India as opposed to the “Celtic twilight” so we can see that instead of dealing with Irish concerns he preferred to look back to classical Greece where he believed that the beginnings of western civilization could be found. In fact , we can even make the same case when it comes to James Joyce , as he also located his narratives of Irish life in greek mythology by using the myths of Daedalus and Ulysses in two of his works : “ A portrait of an artist as a young man “ and “Ulysses”.

At the time when Yeats first began to write , the Celtic aspect of Irishness was of great importance and he tried to express some sense of this Irishness so that he could participate in the Irish cultural and literary revival, and as I have previously mentioned , by writing about these Irish subjects in English he was offering to “deanglicize” Ireland.

He wanted to create a “golden bridge” between the old and the new so that he could both bring the past to present and reinvent the past . So he decided to write about Celtic legends from the past , as he saw them as examples of an “ur-irishness” that could work as a unifying banner. Therefore , we can say that in some way Yeats's espousals of nationalism and patriotism were removed from the green Irish essentialism and that he based his hopes of nationhood on the creation of a new frame of reference for defining that nationhood (by transforming his essentialist concept of nationality he was able to set himself apart from the other revivalists). When he adopted a Celtic mythology in the English language he achieved a negative definition of Irishness that served as a paradigm for a new type of identity , and he also managed to avoid the unpleasant realities of the socio-cultural and religious divisions in contemporary Irish society , and by writing his Celtic pantheon in English he redefined the sense of Irishness that was part of these Celtic narratives. So as we can see , his vision of Irishness was much more inclusive than the Gaelic revivalists.

In James Joyce's novel entitled “Dubliners” , he epitomized an Ireland which was far removed from the mythopoeic Celtism of the revival. In his short stories the definitions of Irishness are micrological in their concern with the daily business of urban living and they also “usher into the debate about identity the issue of social class and the alienation of labour”. So as we can see , “Dubliners” has very little to do with Celtic , Gaelic or even Irish language issues , as the author Eugene O'brien says : “ the macrocosmic questions of identity are subsumed beneath the diurnal detritus of the microcosmic details of lower middles-class living in Dublin”.

So in conclusion , both Yeats and Joyce saw Irish identity in terms that were very different from the Gaelic and Celtic revivalists , as their attitude towards the Irish community was ethically driven and they were adamant in leaving some space for alterity. These fantastic authors sought to define Irishness in a negative way by refusing the “reified” essentialism of the revivalist mentality and we can see that the relationship between Irish Identity , History and the writings of both of these authors was ethically grounded in that the Irishness enunciated by them opens up a space for alterity and for a notion of identity that is very different from itself.

Bibliography :

“The Question of Irish Identity in the Writings of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce” by Eugene O'Brien ;

“Yeats's Nations:Gender , Class and Irishness” by Marjorie Howes; “The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce” by Derek Attridge; “Nationalism in Ireland” by George Boyce;

“Celtic Revivals” by Seamus Deane; “The Cambridge History of Irish Literature” by Margaret Kelleher; “The Course of Irish History” by T.W. Moody;

“The Portrait of an artist as a young man” by James Joyce; “Dubliners” by James Joyce.

#english literature #irish #english lit major

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awesomelizziethewriter-blog · 5 years

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Essay on Philip Larkin

Larkin is often read as a mere observer of contemporary English society, a realistic reporter whose detachment from what he sees is explained as the parting of the writer's mood: for as a poet Larkin is usually described as "depressed," his writing is considered to be melancholic , and his scenes a sad summary of an England to which the principle holds him, but of which he can not give much to like. Larkin's deviation from the literal is apparent in, for example, the poem "The building", the great centrepiece "The building" can be considered a hospital, one of the large newly built or extended glass and concrete buildings that are situated on the outskirts of most of the great English cities of the province, and the poem can be described as an exact recall of a visit to a modern medical establishment.The word "hospital" never appears and whenever its associates seem to emerge the poem starts to move away . As the plot thickens and the rhythm accelerates with the third and fourth stanzas, the patients crowd the waiting room, and the narrative voice of the poem explains their helpless postures with a sympathetic irony that is clearly suggestive (there is a certain “fitness” of tone here).

The poem's figures of speech have a dramatic decorum, and because of this the literal level comes into play in an exact and satisfactory way. But the figures of speech in this poem have a second and greater function, just as colloquialism always serves Larkin more by force than by imprecision. The colloquial use of words such as "confess"; "Error" and "serious" prepare the way for this Kafkaesque terrain. This greatness of allusion is hardly incongruous, since, before the poem ends, the wards are called. The allusion of tones in the poem are so ecclesiastical or metaphysical that even on the literal level, "the building" could easily be a church.

An earlier poem by Larkin, entitled "Mr. Bleaney", locates its hero in "the bodies "before moving to the" hired box "of their current lodgings. Since "box" is in this case a colloquial metaphor, we can also assume that "bodies" is merely a common name in some place in the Midlands: but this embodiment of the name can also mean "in the body," in contrast to " hired box " which can also mean coffin. Mr. Bleaney's limited life span is more interesting and more representative than one might think. In comparison, certain types of mansion blocks built in England for more than a century were and are known as "The Buildings," a fact that gives the title "The Building" and then to the rest of the poem an easy accuracy of contemporary realism. But at this stage of meaning, literalism begins to implode into its opposite. Thus the poem, is about a pathetic and heroic aversion of the eyes from death,and the human will not to see or to name, the apprehension in short of life itself as a “wasteful , weak propitiatory flower” , and as a thing that we can't help meaning to keep that way. In spite of all its realism, the poem grows toward and into something as little of time and place as any symbol is, a noble metaphysical construction made from the “concrete and glass” of the present.

Larkin's poems seem to contain equal measures of quite opposite qualities: a strong and highly literal realism, and a more intense idealism for its lack of body. The continual transitions between the two and the disturbing conflict between them gave his verse a force and energy sometimes hidden by the moderate calm of its surface. However, the dynamic movement is always there, one term needing the other.All of his poems, however violent or ugly they may be in detail, pursue a faithfulness that will make them, in a sense, "like a heaven," but this paradise is essentially a Fallen Eden. The formal properties of Larkin's poems have strength because of the opposing force of what they form and control. Hence what an early poem called, reflecting on the fences around the prairie steers, the "electric boundaries for their wider senses." These "electric boundaries" appear in Larkin's verse as positive forms such as the edges of windows, ways one can look through or look outward, all things that at one time allow and limit vision, or negatively in the acknowledged blanks and voids of the seen.

Almost every poem by Larkin has an essential framework which is as much a matter of internal traits as of external frontiers, an issue which may begin as a formal technical device, but doesn't stop there:poetic form in any good poet unites technique to metaphysics . Larkin's poems, which are as if they were framed experiences, sometimes contain small insets that are seen again through a frame or through a barrier, intensifying their inaccessibility.

In any case, this sense of the limiting conditions ,that are the price of a certain type of intensity of vision, figures in great part in "The Whitsun Weddings". This poem has a great human frankness and Larkin himself spoke of its autobiographical origins. "The whitsun weddings" is a poem about these ceremonies first seen through a train window and then as invading the train the observer travels in, and the four central stanzas of the poem , just like his carriage, are crammed with a dense social comedy of these events. A kind of realism in contemporary manners and styles. But it is worth noting that the most intense part of this poem is not in this substantive centre, but outside of its frame: particularly at the quiet beginning where the narrator begins late on his heavenly work-free holiday , the train taking on his quiet secret blissful release as it went.

In the description of the flat and airy country south of Hull, there is another wedding as well, in the conjunction of those natural powers whose simple beauty and strength the human beings that emerge from a modern urban society can not help but lack. But the condition of attending this other wedding is the loneliness of the observer: who is allowed to have a vision of how things come together only by virtue of seeing precisely how they shine apart. This unique insight is inseparable from the understanding of human solitude, and it introduces with its sympathy the central stanzas of community and union so hopefully tempted, as it also foreshadows the sadness of death at the end of the poem. A poem like "The Whitsun Weddings," as the title suggests, has a clear literal meaning, an allusion to time and place that may be a little ironic but that is a part of its meaning.

In Larkin's poem entitled "Going Going," the narrator begins by bemoaning the fact that the English countryside is beginning to disappear at an alarming rate. He found newspaper “scare-stories” about old streets being built and developed on, but by and large these "fields and farms" remain for city dwellers ,such as Larkin himself, a place they could escape to and enjoy , by getting into the car and driving there. After all, the natural world seems to possess a resilience that humans seem to lack. Regardless of how much we mistreat the land, we can always ignore the damage we cause and pretend that everything is fine. However, the narrator doubts this. The more the population grows, the more demand there will be for new housing; parking spaces and jobs. And as population and jobs expand, businesses also expand, leaving the cities and entering the "unexplored valleys" of rural England. These companies are buying rural lands to build their premises or new housing developments. According to the narrator, all this is happening way too fast and he has the feeling that nothing will last and soon "the whole / Boiling" will be covered over, except for the "tourist parts" that have only been preserved because they have financial value.

England will become "the first slum of Europe," and the English people will become degraded and corrupted (this will then be England gone). And all this will happen through neglect and greed. This is a typically Larkinesque poem, as we can see not only in its pessimistic view of human progress, but also in the linguistic and rhetorical strategies used by the author. The new England is simply "concrete and tyres" and the people who make up this dystopian England of the future are labeled as "crooks and tarts", suggesting crime and greed and financial gain. The effect of this metonymy and synecdoche is twofold , for it evokes the salient features of both visions of England in a way that immediately evokes an image, rather than an idea that exists only in the abstract and also gives the poem an extra "bite" overlooking the “gray” area between the old and nostalgic view of England and the nightmare England of the future.

In the poem "The importance of elsewhere", Larkin clearly defines its themes: cultural identity; solitude; isolation; tradition; the feeling of being different and of belonging. Before arriving in Hull, Larkin worked in a library in Belfast, which is where the inspiration for this poem comes from . The poem explores how living away from your home country can make you feel lonely but at the same time feel welcome as people understand if you do not fit in. "Importance" suggests that something is needed and by being "elsewhere" the person understands who they really are, but they may also have some necessary time away from what is expected of them. Through many of his poems, Larkin conveys the idea that he is different from other people in terms of his points of view and the choices he has made in life , and by going elsewhere, no one questions these differences. "The salt rebuff of speech" is describing the strong Irish accent of the north, and although it may sound unpleasant, the difference actually makes the person feel even more welcome. For Larkin, it's a relief to not be like everyone else.

In the first stanza, the caesura seems to show the hesitant nature of life elsewhere and the barriers that must be faced. In the second stanza, Larkin describes Belfast using various sensory images. In the final stanza, he describes his life in his native England. Although England is his home, Larkin has no excuse to not fit in, because he knows the establishments and knows how to act, so he can not plead ignorance. If he refused to adhere to the custom, it would be much more frowned upon in England (with the final stop line showing that there is no alternative). The final line separated from the rest of the stanza by full-stops serves to emphasize Larkin's point.

"Underwrites" is a legal term meaning to assert, which suggests that Larkin is asserting that only in other places can he be confirmed of his existence and identity. Although Larkin is often seen as a poet who celebrates England and Englishness, he usually keeps a respectful distance from the countryside and from the people who inhabit it. Many of the poems that celebrate the rituals of English life, such as "to the sea" and "the show saturday," also mark the considered distance of the poet from those who take part in such annual rites, although it is a kind of separation that is considered to be more enriching than alienating (one that allows you to see these scenes more deeply). Given this preference for detachment, most of his poems about English scenes describe not only the scene or the place itself, but also its separation and the process of observing it as well. He seems to create a refuge of routine and self-protective solitude. Still, he is not indifferent to the appeal of a possible escape from the confinement which this entails. Many of his poems exalt the romance of travel and the glory of transcending everyday life. "Poetry of departures", for example, satirizes the appeal of this desire to travel by showing its attraction to the poet, yearning for action and immediacy.

Larkin writes about four cities with which he was closely associated it, but he does it with detachment (it is as if he was rejecting any idea of rootedness). In poems about Coventry; Oxford; Belfast, and Hull, he described these cities in ways which either constantly pass by them or otherwise dramatizes his isolation from them. He does not appropriate them as places that have meaning for him personally, on the contrary, he even rejects his place of birth (Coventry). In the poem "Here" the poet continues to move, instead of standing still and describing a scene. He begins his description at some distance from the city and passes through and past it.Ironically, Hull is not portrayed as attractive, nor does it look very much like home. The city contains tattoo shops; consulates; bad-tempered wives and other strange and inelegant images, although it also remains a pastoral scene. Hull was described as "not a place to take lightly". And "here", in many ways, exemplifies this quality, for it seems, at least in some sense, to be primarily addressing a kind of isolation or definition through separation. The "isolate villages where removed lives / loneliness clarifies "seem to incorporate a kind of ideal for the poet. Larkin valued this aspect of the city and, speaking of Hull as a place to live, described it as: "On the road to nowhere, as someone said. It is in the middle of this lonely country, and beyond the lonely country there is only the sea. I like it." Thus, Hull possesses the virtues of protective and beneficent isolation, and becomes a refuge within England's largest island. The title" to the sea "suggests movement rather than a static relationship with the seaside scene, and in a certain way, this poem such as the train poems, charts an idealized journey. The seaside represents a ritual that is in some sense sacred because it is temporary and repetitive and because it is unselfconscious. Unlike the women in "faith healing," who fervently await religious ecstasy, the seaside bathers are more awkward than solemn. The description of the bathers ends with that which seems to express the true religion, since holiday bathers are "helping the elderly too, as they ought." Significantly, no one sees the full importance of this action as clearly as the observant poet, a fact that may tend to elevate him above his surroundings. At the same time, the element of self-parody that Larkin attributes to the poem contributes to its unpretentiousness and charm. The speaker does not comment on his distance from the tourists, but seems content to enter the scene and still remain separate from it.

In conclusion, several of Larkin's descriptive poems, particularly those dealing with the English countryside and community rituals, show acceptance of contentment and a recognition of the significance of the fleeting moment. Because of his keen sensibility to English scenes, Larkin came to be seen as the "unofficial laureate," a title that seems in many ways to define him as a poet. The fact that he refused the honour of becoming Poet Laureate serves to emphasize the distinction of this title.The post of Laureate encompasses both the role of writing about England itself and being read and admired by its people, and Larkin has achieved both of these feats. He received notice for his poetry much later than he had expected, and for a different kind of poetry with which he began. From the dark and gloomy romantic verse, he gradually expanded his writing to include more pastoral and descriptive poetry.

Bibliography:

“Poets in their time –Essays on english poetry from Donne to Larkin” by Barbara Everett.

“Philip Markin-His life's work” by Janice Rossen.

“Whitsun weddings” by Philip Larkin.

“Going going” by Philip Larkin.

“Importance of going elsewhere” by Philip Larkin.

“The Building” by Philip Larkin.

“Mr Bleaney” by Philip Larkin.

“Here” by Philip Larkin.

“To the sea” by Philip Larkin.

#english literature #english lit major #poetry

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