Traditional and Modern Themes in WB Yeats' Works and the Easter Rising and War of Independence in Ireland

- Nostrils (n): the two external openings of the nasal cavity

- Cripple (n): a person who is unable to walk properly due to a disability or injury

- Blackthorn stick (n): a thin piece of wood from a shrub

- Nix (n): to put an end to, nothing

- Squabble (n): a noisy quarrel about something trivial

- Squander (v): to waste in a reckless way

- Elated (v): to make someone ecstatically happy

- Lass (n): a girl, young woman

- Laid up (v): to set down

- Strutting back (v): to walk with a stiff, erect, arrogant way

- Unused (adj/v): to be absorbed in thoughts

- Lingered (n): to spend a long time over something

- Motley (adj): incongruously varied in appearance or character; disparate

- Nod (n): to incline or sway from the vertical as though ready to fall

TRADITIONAL: Themes - society and its problems and consequences (external), novelist's task - the narrator is the mediator, treatment of time - describing acts in chronological order, and narrative technique - 3rd person omniscient narrator. MODERN: Theme - psychology and analysis of the mind and thoughts (interior), novelist's task - to portray life objectively in order to give back a true image, treatment of time - time is subjective and internal, and narrative technique - interior monologue and stream of consciousness.

WB YEATS: Class Irish family, Irish Protestant minority, felt as much Irish as British, "Irish Republican Brotherhood", Abbey Theatre (literary theatre far from commercial one), role of the artist - to create a new culture (Ireland of the past), "The Celtic Twilight" essay (Irish cultural renaissance), disenchantment (nationalist movement), Nobel Prize in Literature 1923, Senator of Dáil (on behalf of Protestant minority threatened by IRA), artistic imagination and national loyalty. THEMES: beauty and eternity, death (connected to BAE - the man dies), loneliness connected with the heroic individual (different from the common man) - overcomes defects (rebirth) - many times before death (connected to man dies). NATIONALISM: "an independent cultural identity" (more cultural than political), self-division (Irish nationalists and unionists).

EASTER RISING AND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE: 1903 - King Edward visited Ireland, 5 Sinn Féin was formed by Arthur Griffith. It encouraged the setting up of an Irish Parliament, 8 Patrick Pearse, a poet and teacher, founded St. Enda's School to teach the Irish-Ireland spirit, 12 the third Home Rule Bill passed through the House of Commons, 13 the Irish Volunteers were founded, 14 the Home Rule Bill was finally passed by the House of Lords but it was carried out at the end of the war, 16 the military council planned the Easter Rising, the General Post Office was chosen as the Rising's headquarters, and Patrick Pearse proclaimed the republic. Casualties included 318 civilians, 60 rebels, and 130 British troops. The rebellion lasted nearly a week. In May, the Rising leaders were executed, 17 Éamon de Valera became the leader of the new Sinn Féin, 18 Sinn Féin swept nationalist Ireland in the general election, 19 an Irish Parliament, the Dáil, was established by Sinn Féin, and the War of Independence began, 20 Ireland was partitioned and Northern Ireland was established, 21 the Anglo-Irish Treaty established the Irish Free State, 22 the Irish Civil War broke out over the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, 23 the Free State forces were victorious in the Irish Civil War, and 49 the Free State became the Republic of Ireland.