Yeats, Joyce and Mother Ireland

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics - English - Literature, Works, grade: sans note, University of Rennes 2, language: English, abstract: James Joyce and William Butler Yeats are two major figures in modern Irish literature. Both are modernist writers who have experienced the transition through revolutions from Ireland as a colony to Ireland as a Free State and finally as a Republic. Their attitude to narrating the nation and the evolution of their style go hand in hand with the societal and political changes. At that time, there was an intense debate on Ireland's subordination, its relationship with England and its mythologies. This study explores the sort of link which exists between the authors' writings, Irish nationality, and nationalism. To what extent can Joyce and Yeats be said to write about the same Ireland while proceeding in a different way? How do they situate themselves in the process of nation-building? Irish nationalism was much debated during the literary revival up until the Post-Free State period. If it is true that it triggered tensions between those who supported it and those who did not, in the case of Joyce who excluded himself from the native tradition by exiling and Yeats who was static in the invention of a tradition, it is more complex. Both share a cultural memory but also possess their own individual memory in which modernism does not mean the same thing. It will be seen that they participate in the culture they criticize while remaining aloof from it and that the material they use to mount this critique is a form of refuge which at the same time is not directed towards the same goal.