Yeats and Irish Politics

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2008

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics. Yeats lived through a period of great change in Ireland from the collapse of the home rule bill through to the Easter Rising of 1916 and the partitioning of the country. In May 1916, 15 men were shot by the British government. They were the leaders of the Easter Rising – a doomed attempt to overthrow British rule in Ireland - and they were commemorated by W.B. Yeats in a poem called Easter 1916. It ends with the following lines: MacDonagh and MacBrideAnd Connolly and PearseNow and in time to be,Wherever green is worn,Are changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.Yeats lived through decades of turbulence in Ireland. He saw the suspension of home rule, civil war and the division of the country, but how did the politics of the age imprint themselves on his poetry, what was the nature of Yeats’ own nationalism, and what did he mean by that most famous of phrases ‘a terrible beauty is born’?With Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford; Fran Brearton, Reader in English at Queen’s University, Belfast and Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry; Warwick Gould, Director of the Institute of English Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the NRTIME podcast. For more details about NRTIME and for our terms of use,
0:05.4	please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.7	Hello, in May 1916, 15 men were shot by the British government. They were the leaders of the
0:17.9	Easter Rising, a doomed attempt to overthrow British rule in Ireland, and they were commemorated
0:22.8	by double b yates in a poem called Easter 1916. It ends with the following lines. McDonough and McBride
0:30.0	and Connolly and Pierce, now and in time to be, wherever green is worn, I changed, changed
0:36.8	utterly. A terrible beauty is born. Yate lives through decades of turbulence in Ireland. He saw the
0:43.2	suspension of home rule, civil war, and the division of the country. How did the politics of the
0:48.2	age imprint themselves on his poetry? What was the nature of yates own nationalism? And what did he
0:53.1	mean by that famous phrase a terrible beauty is born? With me to discuss W.B. Yates and the politics
0:59.5	of Ireland, a Roy Foster, Carol Professor of Irish History at Oxford University, and fellow
1:03.2	Hartford College Oxford, Fran Brayton, reader in English at Queen's University Belfast,
1:08.8	an assistant director of the Sheamus Heaney Centre for poetry, and Worry Gould,
1:12.5	director of the Institute of English Studies in the School of Adonis Study, University of London.
1:16.4	Roy Foster, W.B. Yates, William Butler, Yates is born in Dublin in 1865, into the Protestant
1:22.2	Upper Middle Class. How do you remember of the so-called Protestant ascendancy? Get involved with
1:27.4	the largely Catholic world of Irish nationalist politics.
1:32.4	Well, if nationalism is about belonging and authenticity and to a certain extent compensation,
1:40.5	I think all these apply to Yates's position. He's okay, he's ascendancy, but he's kind of
1:44.9	fringe ascendancy. He's Dick Klasey, the family, his father's of Bohemian. He dislikes the
1:50.9	ruling structures of boring, stifling, unionist, Protestant, Dublin, Sligo, his kind of Ireland.
1:59.6	He's also trying to answer the question, which a lot of people are trying to answer over
	...

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