Contextualizing Yeats

“Easter, 1916”

William Butler Yeats is one of the poets that lived through the great social and geopolitical changes of the first World War. World War I was a major turning point in history for the United Kingdom as well as the world in general. During the war, Irish separatist saw an opportunity to rebel against Britain and gain independence. The uprising, termed the Easter Rising, occurred in 1916. Yeats, at this point in his life, was a well-known writer and playwright who supported the nationalist. However, to understand Yeats’ “Easter, 1916” a poem about the uprising we need to contextualize the author and the poem. The poem centers around the author’s conflicting emotions about the uprising. It identifies the events of everyday life against the sacrifice of everyday people for a broader national goal. Ultimately the poem dabbles in the identity politics of its day. Identity politics are important to the understanding of his poem “Easter, 1916” because they play an important part in how Yeats sees himself and the world around him.

The research includes analyses of Yeats life and his work. The unifying thread among the different essays is the importance of “Easter, 1916” and this epoch of the writer’s life. They also relate in hashing out how his earlier experiences led to his involvement and his perspective on the historical event of the Easter Rising. In works such…