The Irish Literary Revival

reflection of reality. During the 1890s, two strategies developed in an effort to restore the Celtic heritage in Ireland, the Irish Literary Movement and the Neo- Gaelic revival. It is for this reason that an Irish Literary Renaissance began spreading through Ireland. This renaissance was influenced by an increase in the national interest for Gaelic legends and myths. The revival of the old Gaelic heritage served as inspiration to the growing political nationalism. At the close of the 19th century,

Irish Nationalists attempted to establish continuity with what they believed to be appropriate or suitable aspects of Irish history and culture. These attempts lead to both the revival and invention of a culturally distinct Irish heritage not associated with British rule in order to justify a sense of nationhood and to support the Irish struggle for Independence (Hobsbawm in Laurence, A p176) (Laurence, A p.160). Whilst there is no single definition of Irish Nationalism, as the various groups and

The role of the theatre during the Irish Literary Revival was central to Irish cultural nationalism and the political dynamics at the start of the 20th century. As a playwright and a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, Lady Gregory created the backbone of the group that drove the Irish cultural identity towards a more nationalist outlook. Yet as an Irish nationalist, her participation in political causes was often muted; not because of her political views, but because of her gender. Though Lady Gregory

women who devoted their lives towards keeping their culture and history alive for future generations. The Gaelic League was based upon this definition. Bringing together a network of Irish speaking teachers, priests, and writers, the Gaelic League taught thousands the

Yeats Irish Identity shaped poetry, mythology and history, other Irish writers, folktales, Irish Theatre. Many people say that William Butler Yeats was the greatest poem writer from the 20th century but to him he was just an ordinary person that had a love for writing poems. William Butler Yeats was born on 13 June 1865 in County Dublin, Ireland to John Butler Yeats, a lawyer turned portrait painter and Susan Mary Pollexfen, daughter of a wealthy family from county Sligo Yeats's mother shared with

The aim of this thesis is to concentrate on those poems of W.B. Yeats which deal with Irish Nationalism. His poems intimately connect history and literature. The MLA 7th edition format has been used in writing this thesis. Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe in the beginning of the nineteenth century. It pretends to supply the criterion for the determination of the unit of population proper to enjoy a government exclusively of its own, for the legitimate exercise of power in the state for

social and cultural revival preached antagonism towards the social and cultural forms of Great Britain. In this way, the Irish language and literary movement can be seen to have not only encouraged Irish nationalism and separatism, but also fed the flames of Anglophobia which can thus be interpreted as a catalyst in inspiring the imaginations for those who later led the 1916 Easter Rising. The revival of Irish language and literature had a notable effect on the course of Irish politics leading up

in London, Yeats is seen as an inherently Irish literary figure. Through his early work, employing not only ancient Greek myth, but also Celtic legend, he sought to re-ignite in Ireland notions of heritage and tradition, which had diminished through the years. In Ireland, from around 1890 onwards, there was a very noticeable return to all things Irish, including a re-introduction of the Gaelic language, through the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, and the formation of a highly nationalist

its relation to certain English novelistic traditions and also the broader Irish literary tradition in which it belongs. Seamus Deane refers to Ireland as a "Strange Country" and indeed O'Brien's own narrator recalls the words of his father: " . . . he would mention Parnell with the customers and say that Ireland was a queer country." (7) Such a concurrence indicates to a degree the peculiar nature of the Irish situation with regard to

intensity of their own nationalism which made them international. (Power 65) As Maud Gonne said “without Yeats there would have been no Literary Revival in Ireland. Without the inspiration of that revival and glorification of beauty and heroic virtue I doubt there would have been an Easter week” (24). Yeats was born in 1865 near Dublin in Ireland and through his literary work contributed in the cultural nationalism of Ireland. He imagined an Ireland that took shape as modern Ireland. He tried to unify