Sir James Connolly.

Sir James Connolly James Connolly was born to irish parents in Edinburgh in 1868. From an early age, he showed an interesting in history, economics and politics and spent much time reading and studying. perhaps becasue of his Irish parents, he developed and interest in the Irish struggle for Home Rule and in the land question. He spent some time in Ireland with the British army and seeing the people's struggle first nad arose his interest even further. He returned to Edinburgh and spent some time working for a Scottish socialist, John Leslie. He taught him public speaking and effective hand writing, two skills which were to become invaluable to Connolly. He joined the Scottish Socialist Federation and the Independent Labour Party and was blacklisted by the employers of Edinburgh and so was foced to move to Dubln. Here he set up the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1898. Its agenda was a combination of his two interests - nationalism and socialism. He published a newspaper called the Workers Republic in which he expressed his ideas. He soon became noted world wide and was invited to American to lecture on socialist topics. He returned to Belfast in 1911 after almost ten years in America and he became the local organiser of the new trade union, the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, at the request of Jim Larkin. Because of his interest in Nationalism, he worked to

  • Word count: 850
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

By close examination of "An Irish Airman Forsees his Death" and one other appropriately selected poem, discuss the effectiveness of the poetic methods used by Yeats in his presentation of heroic figures from his own lifetime.

By close examination of "An Irish Airman Forsees his Death" and one other appropriately selected poem, discuss the effectiveness of the poetic methods used by Yeats in his presentation of heroic figures from his own lifetime. Consider * Why Yeats chose to write about these figures * The ways in which the form and structure of the poems contribute to Yeats' presentation of heroic figures * Yeats' language - including imagery - and tone in presenting heroic figures. The poet W.B Yeats lived and was writing during a period of Irish history which is infamous for its rebellious historical characters and figures of public admiration. Yeats expresses his feelings with regard to a personal heroic figure in "An Irish Airman Forsees his Death". Yeats then similarly tackles this subject in poems such as "Easter 1916" where he addresses his attitude more broadly towards the heroic, but public figures involved in the rising of 1916. Yeats reveals his explicit admiration for the men whom he writes about in these poems through his dignified and respectful tone. Through his effective use of poetic methods - imagery, language, form and structure Yeats allows the reader a clear insight into his personal reaction to these heroic figures. "An Irish Airman Forsees his Death" expresses Yeats' glowing admiration for his recently deceased friend Robert Gregory, son of Lady Gregory of Coole

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 1143
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

'An Irish airman foresees his death' and 'Wild swans at Coole'

W.B. Yeats's 'An Irish airman foresees his death' and 'Wild swans at Coole' William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of Ireland in the family's summerhouse at Connaught. So of his poems included title such as The tower (1928), The rose (1893), The wind among the reeds (1899) and Responsibilities (1914), But I am going to describe how Yeats expresses deep personal feelings and create a strong personal atmosphere in 'An Irish airman' and 'Wild swans at Coole'. Firstly I am going to talk about 'An Irish Airman'. This poem is about an airman who may well be identified with Major Gregory who was the son of lady Gregory who was one of Yeats's friends. Her son was killed in the war. He was a pilot, which was extremely dangerous in world war 1 for many reasons, one of which was the fighter planes that they used had wooden frames and this meant they could be easily damaged by the enemy machine gun fire in the fights that happened up in the skies (dogfights). Another reason was none of the British pilots had parachutes, which meant that if the pilots were shot down then they couldn't parachute out to safety, and would almost certainly die. The poem starts with the airman saying that he will certainly die. He also tells us that he

  • Word count: 1584
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

September 1913 vs Easter 1916

Write an appreciation about 'The Second Coming' [1127 Words] Consider the following points: * History behind the poem * The 'Gyre' * Sphinx * Format * My view Page 124 in 'W.B. Yeats - Selected Poems 'The Second Coming' is known as one of Yeats 'Later' poems; written in January 1919 and first published in November 1920. The Second Coming refers to the Christian belief in the return of Jesus Christ to fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecy, I believe 'The Second Coming' is deeply concerned with the grim drama of modern war, including World War I as well as the Russian Revolution and the Easter 1916 Rising in Ireland, and Yeats himself described his poem as a reaction to "'the growing murderousness of the world'" to which these wars were alerting him. I Believe 'The Second Coming' to be a response by Yeats of the current state of the world and foreboding about what will come. Yeats is possibly writing this at a time were the aftermath of the war was only viewable. Yeats opens the poem by describing a nightmarish scene - "Turning and turning in the widening gyre The Falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" A frightening image of a falcon and a falconer arising into the heavens were the falcon is unable to sense the falconer. "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world The blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere The ceremony

  • Word count: 924
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

Poetry Analysis of W. H. Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

Poetry Analysis of W. H. Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" Being one of the greatest poet in the modern world and a major figure devoting to the Celtic Twilight, which is a trial and a "popular desire for a revival of Irish traditional culture" (Kelen 32), William Butler Yeats died in January, 1939. Meanwhile, it was only eight months before the outbreak of World War II and the whole Europe was on the edge of the war - there were revolutions within the Continent and people got scared and considered themselves in a war. In Wystan Hugh Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", Auden makes use of an elegy to state the fact of the death of a great poet and moreover, takes the readers to a wider political context focusing on the extent of effectiveness of poetry in time of tumult. In my view, Auden delicately divides the focus of the poem into two levels, the superficial level (the fact of Yeats' death) and the in-depth level (the effectiveness of the poetry in relation to the political context). The two levels are evenly distributed to the three sections of the poem so that even though different sections carry different meanings, they form cohesion. In the first section, Auden states the fact of Yeats' death on an intense cold day by making use of imagery such as the "frozen brooks" (line 2), the "deserted airports" (line 2) and the "disfigur[ing] of the public statues" (line 3). In

  • Word count: 1920
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

Language and Literature Assignment. Analyse 'The Stolen Child' By W.B Yeats.

Language and Literature Assignment. Analyse 'The Stolen Child' By W.B Yeats Shell Woodward Lecturer Sarah Mills The aim of this essay is to analyse W.B Yeat's poem, 'The Stolen Child', by concentrating on his use of literary devices. By carefully analysing the features of language he has used to create the poem I aim to discover how their effects contribute to the overall meaning. The literary devices I will be concentrating on the most shall be metaphor, metonymy and sound patterning. Metaphor & Metonymy W.B Yeats has used an abundance of figurative language throughout the poem. The most prominent is his use of both metaphor and metonymy in the refrain that is repeated four times at the end of each stanza (changing slightly in the final stanza). The refrain consists of four lines but it is in the fourth line, written in iambic heptameter, that contains the most significant figurative language of the entire poem. "The world's more full of weeping than you can understand" Here 'the world' metonymically stands for the child's reality, his society and life, not the literal meaning of soil, gases and water that make up the earth's core. This use of metonymy is used by Yeats to aid the reader/listener to visualize an abstract idea. The speaker of the poem, an enticing faery, refers to the entire world when pointing out its troubles to the child. The effect of this

  • Word count: 2028
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

Commentary: The Scholars by W.B. Yeats.

Commentary: The Scholars by W.B. Yeats. William Butler Yeats is a renowned turn of the century poet. He composed a countless number of works while alive, one of which was The Scholars. The Scholars was written in two stanzas, each comprised of six verses. While on the surface level this poem may not carry much deep meaning, a little research and understanding of the more meaningful allusions and other literary devices within the poem reveals a whole other level. The first stanza is the more bland of the two. Yeats starts out by writing: "Bald heads, forgetful of their sins." Here we see Yeats referring to the scholars as 'bald heads', which can say a lot. First off, by the tone and way in which he uses it, along with the fact that bald is somewhat socially unacceptable and therefore implies a negative connotation, we can assume he is saying it with a negative connotation. 'Forgetful of their sins' refers to the idea that as the scholars write commentaries on Yeats' work, and on others, they criticize the work as though they had forgotten their own mistakes, or sins. The next verse, "Old, learned, respectable bald heads", shows that even though Yeats is referring to the critics and scholars as being the 'bald heads', he is still showing them some respect. The stanza then continues: [...] Edit and annotate the lines that young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in

  • Word count: 1355
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

To What Extent Was the Failure of the Easter Rising Due To Internal Divisions?

TO WHAT EXTENT WAS THE FAILURE OF THE EASTER RISING DUE TO INTERNAL DIVISIONS? The Easter Rising of 1916 had profound and far-reaching effects on Ireland's subsequent history. It has been referred to as "The Irish War of Independence" and was the pivotal event in ultimately securing independence for the Republic of Ireland. Hindsight has its defects as well as its advantages. Because the 1916 rising has lodged itself so firmly in the mythology of Irish revolution it has been easy to regard it as inevitable. But it was far from inevitable. Apart altogether from the internal divisions among the leaders which almost paralysed it at the start, the conditions precedent for a truly national insurrection were simply not in evidence. This was the point above all others that Macneill had tried to drive into the heads of his colleagues when in February 1916 he set down on paper the pros and cons of a rebellion.1 For considerable time it appeared that the critical confrontation in early twentieth-century Ireland would take place not between the British government and Irish nationalists, but between Irish capital and Irish labour, this theory was dashed in 1916.2 On Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916, a force of Irishmen and women under arms estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500 attempted to seize Dublin. Their ultimate intention was to destroy British rule in Ireland and create an

  • Word count: 3466
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

"The Wild Swans at Coole" - Poetic stanza.

"The Wild Swans at Coole" Summary With the trees "in their autumn beauty," the speaker walks down the dry woodland paths to the water, which mirrors the still October twilight of the sky. Upon the water float "nine-and-fifty swans." The speaker says that nineteen years have passed since he first came to the water and counted the swans; that first time, before he had "well finished," he saw the swans mount up into the sky and scatter, "whelling in great broken rings / Upon their clamorous wings." The speaker says that his heart is sore, for after nineteen autumns of watching and being cheered by the swans, he finds that everything in his life has changed. The swans, though, are still unwearied, and they paddle by in the water or fly by in the air in pairs, "lover by lover." Their hearts, the speaker says, "have not grown cold," and wherever they go they are attended by "passion or conquest." But now, as they drift over the still water, they are "Mysterious, beautiful," and the speaker wonders where they will build their nests, and by what lake's edge or pool they will "delight men's eyes," when he awakes one morning to find that they have flown away. Form "The Wild Swans at Coole" is written in a very regular stanza form: five six-line stanzas, each written in a roughly iambic meter, with the first and third lines in tetrameter, the second, fourth, and sixth lines in

  • Word count: 1023
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay

The poem

The poem "Carrickfergus" was written by an Irish writer called Louis MacNeice in The 20th Century. It was written in four line stanzas and now I am going to analyse this poem and talk about each stanza. In the first line of the first stanza, we notice that the child Louis MacNeice is using specific detail in his poem as he says he was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries. MacNeice was brought up among a lot of divisions and when there was a lot of trouble going on, he mentions divisions in his second stanza when he says, "The Scotch Quarter was a line of residential houses, but the Irish Quarter was a slum for the blind and halt." What he means is that the Scotch Quarter is richer than the Irish Quarter and they can afford residential houses but the Irish live in slums for the blind and halt. The word Scotch Quarter and Irish Quarter were intentionally placed together to show the divisions which existed at the time. We can also see the use of onomatopoeia when MacNeice says, "to the hooting of lost sirens and the clam of trams." MacNeice says in the third stanza that there was a stinking smell of chlorine and his lights looked over the Lough to the lights of Bangor, from this we can tell that he lived in a industrial town and he doesn't look it to much as he says the smell stinks, and the yarn-mill

  • Word count: 710
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
Access this essay